Hero of the Day
by xv323
Summary: Movie-deviation fic - Hiccup's patience snaps and he leaves Berk. He returns at the Viking's time of greatest need, but how will they respond to the changes he has wrought to their way of life? See start of first chapter for more detailed info!
1. Hiccup the Useless

**Hi Guys! This is my first posting here on , though I've been reading a lot of stuff on here - in particular, HTTYD fanfics - for a while.**

**This story is going to hopefully be very long. In my mind at present, it's open-ended - I haven't yet thought how I'll end it, but it's going to extend far beyond the end of the movie.**

**It starts off as a straight novelization of the movie for the first two chapters, and then it begins to deviate slightly in the third. By the fourth chapter it's completely different. Then it goes back towards the movie version of events a bit, and then I plan to take it many other places that are _completely _seperate - so don't fear, this isn't only me writing down the movie. I just felt like if I was going to be thorough about it, I shouldn't start a story, that I plan to make quite long, halfway through the movie at the point where it starts to deviate. I wanted to include the start.**

**I do realize there's been a lot of novelizations of the movie on here, so if you want to avoid that, don't read the first two chapters.**

**Other than that, I hope you enjoy, and please review if you enjoyed it...or if you didn't! I'm always looking to improve!**

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 1**

**Hiccup the Useless**

He stood atop the cliff, silent and totally focused.

This time, _this time_ he'd prove them wrong. He knew his bola-thrower worked. He _knew_ he was capable of killing a dragon. He'd just never had the opportunity. Well, that would change.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was considered by his tribe to be a likely candidate for the dubious honour of Worst Viking in History, even at the tender age of 15. He was known throughout as the over-eager, irritating nuisance who would perpetually ruin the efforts of the tribe's more accomplished warriors. In short, he was not liked. And he certainly wasn't thought capable of killing anything, let alone a dragon.

He gnashed his teeth in frustration. What nobody saw, he mused, was that he hadn't ever been given the opportunity to prove himself. His skills were different, yes, but no less suited to the task of killing dragons. He'd just do it a different way to that which had gone before.

This was why he found himself here.

He could hear the sounds of battle echoing faintly below him in the village – the roars and shrieks of the dragons mingled with the war cries of his compatriots and the whisper of the cold night air. He faced the other way, squinting in concentration at the black night sky, searching for something much, much blacker.

He'd reasoned with himself years ago that the only way to even attempt to dispel his reputation was to try to bring down a Night Fury. This most elusive and lethal of dragons had never even been seen for more than a fleeting moment. Its effects, however, were prominent. Come the dawn, Hiccup knew they'd be looking at piles of debris unrecognisable from what they'd constituted hours before. This dragon was capable of demolishing a bombardment catapult, something the size of 3 or 4 Viking houses, in a single shot and a matter of seconds.

Thank the Gods only one of them ever showed up at a time.

No-one had ever killed a Night Fury – not even his great-grandfather, Harald the Mighty. Hiccup knew that to be the first would be a great honour, and would instantaneously elevate him to hero status.

He also knew Night Furies never landed.

He pointed the bola shooter at the night sky and watched.

After a few moments, he noticed some of the stars blinking out momentarily, as if something was passing across the front of them. He grinned to himself – he'd spotted it.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

Throughout, there had been no noise. Now though, his ears began to fill with the wail of the very air being torn asunder as the dragon dived towards its next target utterly unseen.

Unseen, save for one.

Hiccup tracked the passage of the shadow in the sky, shocked, despite himself, at just how fast it was travelling.

His brow furrowed in concentration. He pulled the trigger.

The space in front of him erupted in a maelstrom of cobalt blue and orange, as the dragon's shot hit home and an almighty explosion ripped through a nearby platform. The screech of twisting metal and the splintering of shattered wood met his ears a fraction of a second later.

He heard the screams of the Vikings below him, and then, a scream from the dragon above.

He caught sight of the shadow tumbling towards Raven Point. It disappeared behind the treeline and he saw no more of it.

For a moment he merely stared.

Then he threw his arms aloft.

"I hit it! Yes, I hit it!"

He turned around.

"Did anybody see that?" he asked. By way of answer, behind him, on the cliff, he heard a snarl and a low, menacing rumble.

Slowly he turned, calm and yet utterly terrified. He knew what that growl meant.

"Except for you"

* * *

The last thing Stoick the Vast needed was a distraction at that point.

When grappling with the still-potent head of a Deadly Nadder, the received wisdom was that you concentrated on that at the expense of pretty much everything else. Stoick had fought plenty enough dragons to understand very well why this was the case. The creature bucked and struggled frantically, its powerful neck muscles threatening to throw him clear and into the sea. He held on for all he was worth. It was not worth thinking about the possible consequences of letting go.

Fortunately, the creature seemed to be tiring. Stoick was a substantial man, both literally and figuratively, and it seemed the Nadder could not maintain its strength.

It was just as well.

At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Stoick caught sight of a small form, fleeing a considerably larger one, screaming and trying desperately to avoid the spurts of liquid fire that were coming at regular intervals from the mouth of what Stoick recognised as a Monstrous Nightmare.

He sighed. Hiccup would be the death of him, if he were not first the death of himself.

"Do NOT let them escape" he hollered, pointing back to the dragon he and his comrades had just subdued, as he sprinted up the ramp towards the cliff Hiccup was on.

He got there just in time to see the dragon wrapping its neck around the flaming post of one of their beacon torches. He saw Hiccup, cowering behind the same post, about to be snapped up. Stoick sighed in exasperation, and threw himself at the dragon.

It did not take much to get rid of it. Stoick had fought hundreds of Nightmares, and soon enough it was scrambling to get airborne and get away. Stoick watched it go, and then turned to face his son, glowering from behind his beard, just in time to see the still-smouldering column give way and collapse, tipping the beacon itself down the slopes. It disappeared from sight, and Stoick heard it land with a sickening crunch.

A pause, then the very same dragons Stoick had been fighting rose above the line of the cliff, carrying hundreds of frantically-bleating sheep away with them, in the very same net the Vikings had been trying to catch the dragons with.

Stoick was seething with rage by the time he turned his attention back to Hiccup. And it only got worse when he heard what his son said next.

"Okay, but I hit a Night Fury".

Almost reflexively, Stoick grabbed his son by the back of his shirt and began to carry him away, ignoring Hiccup's furious protestations. To Stoick, they sounded uncannily similar to what he'd heard the last time his son had accomplished a similar level of destruction.

He set his son down and glared at him.

"Stop!" he bellowed. "Just…stop! Every time you step outside, disaster falls! Can you not see that I have bigger problems? Winter is almost here and I have an entire village to feed!"

Hiccup's answer was nothing if not inflammatory.

"Well, between you and me, the village could do with a little less feeding, don't ya think?" he deadpanned.

Stoick was close to murderous by this point.

"This isn't a joke, Hiccup!" Stoick sighed in utter exasperation. "Why" he groaned "can't you follow the simplest orders?"

"I can't help myself! I see a dragon and I have to just…" – Hiccup mimed the action of wringing a dragon's neck, not altogether convincingly – "kill it. It's – it's who I am dad!"

Stoick could not believe his ears. He put his hand to his head and groaned "you are many things, Hiccup, but a _dragon killer" _– Stoick let the disdain show in his voice – "is _not_ one of them. Get back to the house". He turned to Gobber.

"Make sure he gets there".

* * *

Hiccup mulled over the previous night's events as he searched for his downed dragon. It did not make for pleasant recollection.

It was a familiar feeling though – this had happened many a time before. With one exception. This time, Hiccup actually had hit a dragon and brought it down. He was convinced, utterly sure of it.

_So why_, he wondered in frustration, _can't I find it?_

It shouldn't have been difficult. Raven Point was heavily forested and it was broad daylight. A dragon crashing at the speed a Night Fury would typically fly at should have left its mark.

But he'd not found anything.

Irritated to distraction, he scribbled furiously on his improvised sketch map of the area and slammed the notebook shut.

"Oh, the gods hate me" he whined. "Some people lose their knife, their mug, but not me! I managed to lose an entire _dragon_?" He swiped his arm angrily at a branch. It whipped back, recoiled, and struck him straight along the jawline. Hiccup reeled back, unable to help but think that this was somehow an unnervingly adequate symbol for his whole life.

Absentmindedly, his eyes roamed the trunk of the tree that the branch belonged to. As he gazed further up, he noticed splinters protruding from the main body of the trunk, and then a whole section that had been peeled away like a banana skin, in a very specific direction. Curious, Hiccup followed the line of the broken section, and caught sight of a deep, freshly-made trough in the earth. It led over the brow of a small hill.

Hiccup caught his breath. To him, it looked like something had crashed here.

He slid down into the furrow and unsteadily made his way along it, skirting roots and other debris that lay in the way. Reaching the crest, he poked his head over the top and glanced down into the small clearing below.

And immediately threw himself to the ground as he recognised the shape of a very black, very sinister dragon lying in the undergrowth.

His heart pounded. He hadn't seen enough, in the fractions of a second before his survival instincts took over, to determine whether the dragon was dead, alive, trapped or free.

Hearing no sound, no roar that would surely sound his death knell, he raised his head, ever so cautiously, above the level of the crest again.

He let his eyes capture the sight. Lying in a small patch of grass was a sleek, midnight-black form that radiated pure menace. Hiccup could see one of its wings raised at an awkward angle and it lay unmoving on its side. Looking closer, he saw the tell-tale brown lines criss-crossing its body to testify to the fact that his bola-thrower had clearly worked. The dragon was trapped, and it appeared dead.

He took no chances though. Although nobody had ever seen or drawn one, there could be no doubt which dragon this was that Hiccup was looking at. A Night Fury it clearly was – the colour, and the powerful muscular contour of the body, neck and wings, could testify to that.

He paced down the slope, keeping the noise of his footfall to a minimum. Crouching behind the nearest rock, he steeled himself. Inching round to face the dragon, he saw its head for the first time. Its eyes were closed and its brow was relaxed. It looked noble, proud and unutterably fearsome.

And he'd killed it.

He felt sure of it. The thing hadn't moved in all the time he'd been looking at it. He relaxed and strolled slowly up to his prize.

"I did it! This fixes everything!" he congratulated himself in disbelief. "I have brought down this mighty beast!"

He placed one foot on the dragon's front upper leg, and was stunned a moment later to find himself thrown backwards by a mere shrug of the dragon's shoulder. It hadn't even woken up.

More to the point however, it plainly wasn't dead.

Hiccup stood again, more cautiously this time, and paced slowly towards the form lying prone on the ground. His eyes flitted fearfully to the dragon's own – thankfully still closed – and then scanned the rest of the body. The tail was obscured from view, but he could see no injury. Plainly, the only reason Hiccup was still alive at this point was the rope entangling the Night Fury's wings and paws.

He glanced at the stomach, at the chest, and then finally, back to the head.

Its eyes were open.

It hadn't made a sound or twitched a single muscle, but Hiccup felt his core go cold at the gaze he was fixed with. The dragon's jet-black slit-shaped pupils, set in brilliant jade, stared him down stoically. It seemed to him like a noble warrior preparing to meet death with dignity.

Hiccup wavered. That gaze was unsettling. At that moment, he'd felt like he could see into the dragon's soul.

He steeled himself. This was a dragon; he couldn't see through a window into its soul because it didn't have a soul. It was a pest – a particularly difficult and dangerous one, but vermin nonetheless. And he'd be celebrated for killing it. This was fate, he was sure.

Had he known then what would come to pass, he would have considered himself correct – it was certainly fate. But not in the way he envisioned it then, not at all.

"I'm gonna kill you, dragon" he heard himself mutter. "I'm gonna…I'm gonna cut out your heart and take it to my father". He raised the dagger, blade pointed straight down, to his chest height. "I am a Viking" he whispered to himself, and then to the dragon, he shouted the same.

The dragon did not flinch, did not break the stare it had been holding all this time.

Hiccup closed his eyes and raised the dagger in potency to hold it aloft above his head. He closed his eyes and readied to bring the knife plunging down again.

Yet, he found he could not.

He opened his eyes again. The dragon still held him fixated in its gaze. He saw in it so many things. Intelligence. Anguish.

He shook the thoughts violently from his mind.

_I have waited all my life to do this. I cannot fail, now that I have the chance in front of me._

He screwed his eyes shut and raised the blade still higher. He heard the dragon give a small moan.

He held the knife there for what seemed an eternity. And yet even as he fought with himself to finish what he'd started so well, he knew it would not happen.

He could not do it.

He let the tension ebb out of his arms, and the hilt of the dagger fell until it tapped the top of his head. His shoulders slumped and he exhaled deeply. His eyes opened and he saw the dragon's head rolled back, its eyes now shut. It had clearly thought it was going to be killed.

He glanced with contempt at the dagger he held loosely in his right hand. Such a crude and blunt instrument next to the sleek black harbinger of fury that now lay motionless and tensed in front of him.

"I did this" he muttered, and turned to leave. He took one step, and stopped.

_Am I such a coward,_ he thought, _that I would not kill the dragon myself, yet I would let it die of hunger, or cold, out here and unable to escape?_

_No_, he resolved, _I am not_.

He turned back to the dragon.

* * *

The Night Fury felt the ropes begin to slacken around him.

His eyes shot open in surprise. Another rope fell loose to the ground.

A moment ago he'd been ready to die, and yet, after what had seemed like an eternity of waiting for the final blow to fall, he was now being freed.

Even to such an intelligent creature as he was, it made no sense.

He would not question it, though. And he was not weak enough to reciprocate the hatchling's feeble gesture of mercy.

He tensed, waiting for the right moment. One rope still trapped his front left paw. When that was cut, he would be free.

He waited.

The rope fell to the forest floor, with a dull hiss against his scales.

Instantly he was up, and he pinned the boy to the nearest boulder too fast for him even to cry out.

The dragon stared at the human.

There was no malice in the young one's eyes. Only fear.

Surely this one deserved to die?

_And yet…_

The fates whispered otherwise in his ears.

_I know better than to disregard them._

He raised his haunches. So be it, the boy would not die. But the dragon was still not happy.

He roared at the frail form below him, screaming his anger, screaming his indignation. A scream that shook the trees and the earth, a scream to show the fledgling what might have been, had not the fates, for whatever reason, decided he should live.

He did not know why he desired this boy be kept alive, and presently he did not care. He was on the humans' island, and needed to leave. It was the height of day, and he was a Night Fury.

He turned and sprung lithely through the trees. In an instant he was aloft.

The wind felt good on his scales. It felt like home.

And yet, something he sensed was amiss.

He felt his tail flick unbidden to the left, and his right wing dipped suddenly and drunkenly in response. Something was certainly wrong.

* * *

**There! Again, please review!**

** Should be uploading chapters fairly quickly, for the first few at least - I have seven chapters done so far, and all they require is a little proof-reading and they can go up.**


	2. A Change in the Air

****

Here's chapter 2! This one is very, _very_ long and, as I said at the start of chapter 1, is completely like the movie besides the fact it skips a few scenes. Mostly at this point I was writing for my own benefit, to sort out my writing style and for my own satisfaction that I'd been thorough with the story.

Thanks to those who've reviewed already!

**Portgas D. Nikky - absolutely no offense taken, I expected that! =P I just wanted to start the story from what felt like a natural beginning. In terms of the way I imagined an alternate-storyline version of the movie playing out, the first stages were identical to the movie, before plot changes start later on. It did almost feel like a chore getting chapters 1 and 2 and the first half of chapter 3 done, before I could get on to using my imagination a bit more. Hopefully my style of writing is good throughout though. You personally might want to avoid this chapter as it is another bit of movie-serialization. Chapter 3 is where it starts to change in little ways, and the bigger changes start in 4. I intend possibly to get chapter 3 up today as well, by the way...**

******Toothless-the-nightfury - thanks so much! Glad to hear people are enjoying it!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 2**

**A Change in the Air**

The Night Fury lurched through the air, unable to gain altitude and not understanding why.

Normally so adept at flight that his species could have gone centuries without being properly observed by the humans, the dragon was alarmed to find he was now unable to govern his path of flight. He plunged downwards momentarily before his wings again clawed back purchase with the air, and he steadied himself, with effort.

Ahead of him, beyond the edge of the forest, he could see a small cove enclosed on all four sides by sheer cliffs. Trying in vain to gain altitude, the tip of one of his great black wings clipped a low lying branch. Screeching in horror, the dragon lost all semblance of controlled flight and tumbled from the air.

Landing heavily on a small grassy mound, the dragon took a moment to breathe and feel for injuries. Satisfied none of his bones were broken – effectively a death sentence for a dragon, since dragon bones are semi-hollow to make them light enough to sustain flight – he raised his head and looked around him hesitantly.

The first sight that met his eyes was sheer gray rock. Pivoting his head on his muscular neck, scanning his surroundings, he saw nothing but the same all around him.

He screeched in horror. He'd landed in the cove, and if his last performance had been anything to go by, there was not a chance of his being able to fly out again.

This was not good.

* * *

Hiccup shut the door as quietly as he could.

In the centre of the room, poking at the fire, he could see his father, distracted and seeming not to have noticed him.

This was good. Hiccup didn't want to talk with anyone, least of all his father. The events of the past hours had been too confusing. He needed time to mull it over.

He inched his way towards the stairs, and slowly began to pad up them, still at pains to avoid making any noise.

It hadn't worked though.

"Hiccup" he heard his father say, solemnly. Not good.

"Dad!" Hiccup tried his best to sound surprised, but his heart wasn't in it. He sighed, relenting. "I have to talk to you, Dad" he said, stepping down from the stairs.

"I have to speak with you too, son".

Both took a deep breath.

"I've decided I don't want to fight dragons" Hiccup heard himself blurt out, at the same time becoming aware that his father had similarly blurted out something that just happened to end with the word 'dragons'.

"What?" they both asked of the other.

The chief took a step back and gestured. "Err, you go first".

Seeing the possibility that his father had given up on him and was about to tell him he was never to be allowed to fight dragons – an opportunity not to be missed, since it meant not losing face in the village, at least by comparison with admitting he didn't want to – Hiccup responded "No, no, you go first".

"Alright" The great Viking paused. "You get your wish. Dragon training" he gestured again at Hiccup. "You start in the morning".

Hiccup's heart almost jumped clean out of his ribcage. He shot up from his slouched position. This was an extremely bad development.

"_Oh man, _I should have gone first". Hiccup's stomach was doing somersaults. "Because, you see – " he tried frantically for an excuse – "I've been thinking – " he continued with his nervous waffle, trying desperately to avert the calamity he knew would ensue if he were to be placed into a ring with several large and irritable dragons, and several smaller but equally irritable contemporaries of his.

He was only interrupted by the not insubstantial weight of an axe being dropped into his outstretched, gesticulating arms.

"You'll need this" he heard his father say.

In his desperation, Hiccup decided to try the more direct approach.

"I – I don't want to fight dragons".

This too failed to work.

"Oh, come on, yes you do".

Hiccup couldn't blame his father for being disbelieving. He'd spent his whole life listening to his son plead with him to be allowed to attempt to kill a dragon. Stoick hadn't seen any of what had transpired earlier that day in the forests of Raven Point. Why he would believe his son's sudden change of heart Hiccup couldn't see. He certainly didn't seem to be doing so now.

"Rephrase" Hiccup began. "Dad, I _can't_ kill dragons".

"But you _will_ kill dragons!" his father responded cheerfully.

"No, I'm really very extra sure that I won't"

His father turned back towards him, suddenly as solemn as the day of his wife's, and Hiccup's mother's, funeral.

"It's time, son".

Hiccup was on the point of starting to tear his own hair out with frustration. "Can you not hear me?"

"This, is _serious_, son" Stoick cut across him. "When you carry this axe –" he took the axe out of Hiccup's arms and waved it purposefully for emphasis – "you carry all of us with you".

Hiccup thought it wise at this point to refrain from indulging in sarcastic remarks regarding just how difficult it would be for him, the scrawniest boy in the village, to actually carry the entirety of Berk's substantially-built population with him on his shoulders.

"That means" Stoick continued "you walk like us, you _talk_ like us –" Stoick grabbed his son by the shoulders and hauled him upwards into something vaguely resembling a noble and battle-ready posture – "and you think like us. No more of…_this_". He gestured in Hiccup's general direction.

Hiccup was by this point feeling bitter and not a little put-upon, and this didn't help. "You just gestured to _all_ of me" he snapped irritably. His father barely noticed.

"Deal?"

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided". Hiccup tried to stall what he knew was coming.

"_Deal?"_

Hiccup sighed. Of all the things that could have completed his bad day, this was possibly the worst. Yet there was nothing to be done about it.

He let the blade of the axe fall gently to the floor in defeat.

"Deal" he responded, resignedly.

"Good". Stoick shouldered a large sack, presumably containing supplies for the raid that Hiccup knew had been planned for the next day.

"Train hard". The chief continued. He walked purposefully towards the door. "I'll be back". He paused, before adding "probably".

"And I'll be here…maybe". Hiccup responded wearily, thinking that at the rate things were going, he almost certainly wouldn't.

* * *

He paced slowly down the hard stone ramp, reflecting that on past form, he really shouldn't be here.

His fraught conversation with his father the previous night had led to this. Dragon training. This gruelling but short process was a glorious and much anticipated rite of passage for most Viking teenagers, including himself, up until yesterday.

Knowing how his incapability of killing what should have been the least morally ambiguous dragon to kill, he sorely doubted he'd be much use here, particularly given that these dragons were not normally trussed up in bolas and immobilised beforehand.

Feeling about as ready as he thought he ever would, he slowly walked out into the arena. Essentially a large stone bowl covered in a dome of thick iron bars, its walls were scratched, dented and scorched from years of mock combat. It was well known that the danger of death in training was as real as the danger of death in an actual raid. The vast armour plated doors that lined the walls of the arena could testify to that.

Up ahead stood his 5 contemporaries – adolescents his age who, like him, had reached the requisite age. He reflected bitterly that of them all, he was the only one with no prior experience whatsoever. The rest had been on the firefighting team, which whilst not a direct combat role, entailed its fair share of close scrapes. Dragons did not discriminate between combatants and no.

Snotlout Jorgenson was the most typical young Viking of the group. He was Hiccup's cousin, although familial resemblance was to all intents and purposes absent between the two of them. An alpha male with upper arms as thick as his head, Snotlout was the archetypal brash and arrogant youthful warrior. He was also the one singled out to be the next chief – an exceptional set of circumstances, as it was normally the son of the chief who would succeed his father. However, the chief's son just happened to be Hiccup, and the elders, his father and his father's right-hand-man and brother, Spitelout – Snotlout's father – had all agreed that this fact alone warranted a break with tradition. Hiccup was not, to put it mildly, highly regarded.

Fishlegs Ingerman was the bulkiest and most easygoing of the group. Obsessed with statistics, facts and figures, he seemed perfectly capable of making up for whatever combat deficiencies he might have had, with a sound knowledge of the facts. Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston, meanwhile, formed the two halves of the most unholy association Hiccup had ever known. They were twins, Tuffnut being the elder by 5 full minutes, a fact he loved to remind his sister of. They essentially hated each other and were capable of the most stunning flights of insulting verbal invention that Hiccup could imagine hearing. It was claimed they had coined the slur 'troll-eating mongoose', now widely used, and frankly Hiccup believed it.

In the middle though, stood by far the most capable of all of them. Astrid Hofferson was exceptional in every sense of the word. She was prodigiously fast, agile, strong beyond her years and yet lithe, slim and, to Hiccup's mind and many others', ferociously attractive. He'd long since given up on ever attracting her attention beyond the cursory irritated glances she'd give him when he'd done something stupid, but that didn't mean he couldn't admire her from afar. Thus, he did.

They were talking about scars, and more specifically how much fun it would be to get one in training. Hiccup shook his head. His village and its occupants could be exceptionally irrational.

He heard Astrid chip in. "Yeah, it's only fun if you get a scar out of it".

This was not unusual for her.

Hiccup joined in, announcing the fact he was behind them.

"Yeah, no kidding, right? Pain. _Love it_" he added, in his trademark sarcastic drawl.

Tuffnut snorted. "Oh great, who let him in?"

Gobber's voice boomed behind them. "Let's get started! The recruit who does best will win the honour of _killing_ – " Gobber twisted the hook he used as a hand by way of illustration – "of killing his first dragon, in front of the entire village".

"Hiccup already killed a Night Fury, so…does that disqualify him?" Hiccup heard Snotlout snigger derisively. He sighed as the twins broke into peals of laughter. Astrid merely rolled her eyes.

"Don't worry" said Gobber, pushing Hiccup towards the centre of the ring. "You're small and weak, and that'll make you less of a target! They'll see you as sick or insane and go after the more Viking-like teens instead". He gestured towards where the rest of the class were waiting.

Hiccup merely rolled his eyes and reflected that he probably was insane to be here at all.

Gobber continues, now addressing the entire group. "Behind these doors – " he pointed towards the thick-set gates recessed into the arena wall "are some of the many species you will learn to fight". Gobber took a step towards the wall and began reeling off dragon names that Hiccup vaguely recognised, if only from the shouts he remembered hearing on a regular basis during raids.

Gobber reached the last of the cages, and to Hiccup's consternation, placed his arm upon the lever that would open the door, whilst announcing to the young trainees that this particular enclosure contained a Gronckle. Gronckles were unusual amongst dragons. Built like siege engines, their short wings flapped many thousands of times a minute, becoming nothing but a blur when they were airborne. They were perhaps the most ungainly of dragons, but their shots were like cannonballs, and they were as dangerous as any other.

And it seemed Gobber was about to set one on them.

Snotlout was clearly thinking the same thing. He stepped forward, alarmed.

"Whoa, wait, aren't you gonna teach us first?"

"I believe", Gobber responded with a sly grin, "in learning on the job".

He pushed the lever down, the doors flew open, and Hiccup and the other teenagers were confronted with a ton and a half of angry, spike-covered dragon hurtling towards them.

Hiccup could think of nothing to do except be somewhere else, very rapidly indeed. He ran. As did everyone.

In the background, Hiccup heard Gobber begin what was clearly an old, well-worn routine.

"Today is about survival. If you get blasted, you're dead!" This, Hiccup felt, was hardly reassuring.

"Quick, what's the first thing you're going to need?" Gobber shouted.

"A doctor?" Hiccup responded, still incredulous at just how short a time it had taken, since the start of the class, for his life to be plunged into horrific and imminent danger.

"A shield" he heard Astrid say calmly. This hadn't occurred to Hiccup.

Even if Gobber hadn't, moments later, confirmed Astrid was right, Hiccup would have gone to get a shield anyway, in all likelihood with a not inconsiderable quantity of haste and panic, given the dragon that just happened to be occupying the same arena as them.

As it was, everyone dashed towards the pile of shields lying strewn across the far wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the twins squabbling over one, before seconds later, the Gronckle let loose a shot that went sailing between them, obliterating the shield and sending them both flying spectacularly to the floor.

"Tuffnut, Ruffnut, you're out!" Gobber yelled, a little too cheerfully.

Hiccup was becoming increasingly agitated. How on earth was he supposed to come out of this alive?

Perhaps he wasn't, he thought. It seemed thus.

"Every dragon has a limited number of shots". Gobber continued, as if nothing had happened. "How many does a Gronckle have?"

"Six!" Fishlegs responded immediately. This was impressive, Hiccup mused.

Unfortunately, it meant the larger boy forgot, just for a split second, where the dragon was. It was therefore no surprise to see the boy's shield fly from his grasp seconds later as the dragon fired again.

Fishlegs ran, screaming. Something Hiccup felt like doing.

The Gronckle appeared a pretty wayward specimen. It loosed off another shot at Hiccup, who was lucky to be able to dodge it.

Moments later, he found himself on the other side of the arena, separated from Astrid and Snotlout. It was fortunate the dragon was facing them.

And Snotlout wasn't paying attention.

Hiccup stared incredulously. He was trying to chat Astrid up.

Astrid, for her part, didn't seem to be listening. She was watching the Gronckle.

This approach was vindicated seconds later when the dragon fired another flaming projectile from its mouth. The range of the shot enabled Astrid to easily roll clear, but Snotlout, who was still not looking in the dragon's direction, was directly in the firing line.

The shot hit his shield, instantaneously splintering it into a million small pieces. Snotlout staggered away, dazed and wobbly.

Astrid, meanwhile, had rolled to the other side of the arena. She now stood next to Hiccup.

"So, just you and me, huh?" he quipped to the still-intensely concentrating Astrid.

Her eyes widened. "Nope, just you" she responded, before wheeling away.

Hiccup, momentarily confused, looked back to where he'd last seen the dragon. In its place, he saw a bright orange fireball, much closer than he would have liked it to have been, and getting rapidly closer.

Reflexively, he raised his shield and ducked his head.

He felt the shield tear itself away from his grasp with astonishing force as the Gronckle's shot glanced off it. It rolled away across the arena floor.

Hiccup followed it. He did not want to be out in the open, with a Gronckle and without a shield. The events of the previous few minutes had taught him that.

The path of the rolling shield took it towards the arena wall. Hiccup could hear the humming of the Gronckle's wings as it bore down on him. The shield deviated to the right, and Hiccup couldn't change direction quickly enough on the slippery and cold stone floor. He continued towards the wall.

The Gronckle sounded closer than ever to him now. He was still surprised, however, when he turned round, to see just how close it was.

It hit the floor and slid the last few feet towards him on its stomach, pinning Hiccup against the wall.

Hiccup peered up into the dragon's enormous and gaping mouth. An orange glow began to grow at the back of its throat.

So this was it, then. Hiccup didn't particularly mind. He'd known dragon training would be a disaster for him, and in an odd way, he thought it fitting that the most inept dragon fighter of them all – himself – should die in his first encounter with one. It was reflex alone that brought Hiccup's arms up to protect his head.

He heard the rumble as the shot built up. He tensed.

A sharp crack echoed in his left ear, and moments later he felt an intense heat radiate from somewhere above and to the left of his temples.

He opened his eyes.

Gobber's hooked prosthetic hand was grappling the dragon by the inside of its cheek. He'd grabbed it at the last moment and directed its shot up and away from Hiccup.

"And that's six" he heard Gobber say, before adding "Go back to bed, ya overgrown sausage!", waving his finger in an accusatory manner in the dragon's direction.

Hiccup sat dazed and winded where he'd fallen. Distantly, he heard Gobber talking to the whole group.

"You'll get another chance, don't you worry!" The irony in this was not lost on Hiccup. What worried him most now was perhaps that he would have to do this again every single day.

"Remember, a dragon always – "Gobber leant down to look Hiccup closely in the eye – "_always_, goes for the kill".

The Viking hauled Hiccup to his feet.

Hiccup barely noticed. Something had immediately occurred to him.

If what Gobber had just said was true, Hiccup should, by rights, have died the moment he'd loosened the ropes on that Night Fury.

* * *

He stood in the now sunlit clearing, idly fingering the stones of one of the bolas he'd cut from the dragon the previous day.

It was now early afternoon, and Hiccup had taken the earliest opportunity that presented itself to get away from the village and think. He rather felt he needed to.

He wandered slowly down the shallow hill leading away from the sunlit patch of grass. This was the direction he'd seen the dragon fly away. He could've sworn, however, he'd seen it in difficulty as it had tried to do so. The last glimpse he'd caught of it was of a rapidly falling, indistinct black shape screaming its indignation to the forests around. He wondered if it had crashed nearby.

He came up against a shallow bank of stone with a small, naturally-cut opening. He squeezed through it, and found himself looking down upon a gloriously lit, secluded and steep-sided cove.

A small pond formed the centre, and from it led a small stream that led through a small crack in the rocks on the far side. Birds chirped in the high noon sun and the light cascaded down in shafts of soft yellow, onto a grassy, fallow meadow bordered by small trees.

It was beautiful. But there was no sign of his mystery dragon.

"Well this was stupid" he muttered, looking down to the ground he stood on, which formed a small lip looking down over the cove. He paused. A couple of thin black discs lay scattered on the ground by his left foot. He picked one up and turned it over in his hands.

Just as the thought entered his head that the colour reminded him of the Night Fury, a dark blur roared into his peripheral vision and his ears were filled with the sound of frantic scrabbling.

He fell to the floor in shock and looked back upwards. There, clawing at the rock above him, was the Night Fury. It slipped down slightly, appeared to give up and wheeled away back over the cove. It landed heavily, as if it had barely been in control of its flight in the first place.

Hiccup gasped, and crawled closer to the edge of the lip, transfixed.

The Night fury tried again, flapping its wings desperately, trying to gain some purchase on the air. Yet, it tumbled back to earth again and landed on its flank, roaring in terror and anger.

Hiccup stared for a moment, then, snapping back to reality, opened his notebook and quickly began sketching. The great black wings, the arrow-like head, the long, thin tail. The final details included the two slender tailfins – although from this angle he only saw one, he presumed there must be two.

He was bewildered. This dragon was supposed to be the most capable in the air of any of them. Why couldn't it get out of the cove?

"Why don't you just fly away?" he wondered aloud to himself. As he did so, the dragon's tail swished round below him, and with a sharp intake of breath he noticed that the second of the dragon's tailfins was indeed missing. It was common knowledge that dragon tails were essential for balance in the air and even the slightest shift in the weight balance of them could render a dragon unable to fly at all.

The dragon roared, and fired a small burst of blue fire at the ground in front of it, clearly frustrated.

Hiccup looked down to his sketch, and with the back of his hand, smudged out the second tailfin he'd drawn. He looked up again to see the dragon attempting yet again to get airborne. It beat its wings a couple of times, before its tail flicked forwards of its body, it half-rolled in the air and landed heavily on the shores of the small pond.

It sat there for a moment, seemingly frustrated. Then, spotting something below the surface of the water, it crept forward, before plunging its head it. Hiccup presumed it was trying to fish, but it came up with nothing.

He sighed. He almost pitied it. Without flight, it was essentially incapable of survival for a long period. And it had been his fault.

He straightened up and let his pencil roll out of his hand. However, as he did so, it began to roll over the edge of the lip. Hiccup hastily made to grab it, but it was too late, and the pencil clattered to the ground below, echoing off the rocks.

Hesitantly, Hiccup looked back up. The dragon was watching him.

Crouched low, it fixed Hiccup with a suspicious stare that seemed to bore into him. Hiccup's initial fear was gradually replaced by curiosity, and he stared back.

He could've sworn he saw a slight smile playing across the dragon's face.

He shuddered and checked himself. Dragons were supposed to be emotionless and highly violent. This was not at all how he'd expected a Night Fury to behave.

* * *

It was raining in Berk. And when it rained in Berk, it didn't mess around. The raindrops seemed not merely to fall from the sky but to be fired out of them at ridiculous speed and in ridiculous quantities. It took a matter of seconds to become utterly drenched upon stepping outside. Hiccup had been walking for the best part of half an hour. It felt like his bones had puddles on them.

Peering into the gloom, he could just make out the entrance to the Great Hall. Embedded in the cliffs of the north of the island, this was the only old building in Berk. It had been built to last. Great torches, vast fiery beacons, marked the entrance.

Fire and water. Such contrast.

Much like the day's events. Trying to avoid being killed by a dragon by running away from it, and then, mere hours later, actively seeking out one far more dangerous.

Hiccup couldn't understand his own behaviour.

Did that make him insane? Perhaps.

He trudged up to the huge doors, and slowly pushed on one of them until it gave way. He slipped inside.

The flickering halflight within illuminated the rest of the teens, plus Gobber, sitting at a table in the middle of the cavernous chamber. Trudging slowly over, he could hear them discussing the day's events.

"So, where did Astrid go wrong in the ring today?". Gobber addressed his question to everyone else.

"I mistimed my somersault dive. It was sloppy. It threw off my reverse tumble". Astrid replied immediately, without a hint of emotion.

"Correct. Glad you spotted it". Gobber turned to the rest of them. "It might seem like a small thing, but remember, you have to be tough on yourself".

Hiccup reached the table and Gobber noticed.

"Where did Hiccup go wrong?"

Hiccup winced. He'd hoped to go unnoticed. He knew exactly what was coming next. And sure enough, a barrage of disparaging comments was gleefully launched in his direction from all around the table.

"Err, he showed up!"

"He _didn't_ get eaten!"

"He's _never_ where he should be".

This last comment came from Astrid, in her trademark tone of detached, absent irritability, which she reserved especially for the times he screwed up. Since, in Astrid's eyes at least, this was pretty much all of the time, this was essentially the only tone of voice he ever heard her use.

Hiccup sighed, and moved on to the adjacent table. He slumped in the seat, exhausted, needing time to think. Certainly, he wasn't in the mood for the sort of mockery he was currently getting. But being here was part of the class. It was almost a debrief, and to most of the teens, it was the tedious part of the process, to be endured until they could get back to the business of risking life and limb.

Hiccup liked it more. He wasn't likely to die in this particular bit.

He glanced up wearily as Gobber tossed an old leather bound book onto the table.

"The dragon manual" he announced. "Everything we know about every dragon we know of." He paused. A sly grin spread across his face. "Study up!"

Everyone's head but Hiccup's shot up in alarm.

"What, _now_?" Tuffnut exclaimed.

"Oh, _Godsssss…_" Ruffnut echoed her brother's sentiment, exasperation manifest in her voice. She dramatically slammed her head down onto the hard wooden table, and continued grumbling.

The prospect of reading was not proving popular, with the exception of Fishlegs, but Hiccup suspected the young Viking could have recited the manual off by heart without so much as a glance at it. Astrid held her silence, but Hiccup could see the irritation in her eyes. She was not the sort to carefully study something before killing it. Most of the time, she really just wanted to end its life and have done with it.

Amongst all this, Hiccup quietly picked himself up from where he sat, strode over to his classmates' table, reached a hand out to grab the manual, and walked slowly, silently, away. He'd return later, when they'd all left, but now he needed silence and time for reflection and he wouldn't find it here.

The protestations of the others ceased swiftly behind him, and he felt their eyes boring into his back as he made his silent exit.

* * *

Astrid was on top of him.

Surprisingly perhaps, for Hiccup this was not something to be celebrating.

Moments beforehand, Astrid had jumped from a wooden fence erected in the dragon training arena, trying to avoid the attentions of a rather furious Deadly Nadder. As the turquoise blue dragon, losing sight of Astrid, changed its target and ran after Fishlegs, Astrid tried furiously to disentangle herself.

Her axe was buried deep in Hiccup's shield and her leg had become entangled round his, preventing her from standing up straight away, as she would have liked to have done. She kicked furiously, trying to get his leg off hers.

Hiccup heard a voice drift into the arena. Very clearly belonging to Tuffnut, it whined in a mocking voice, "Ooh! _Love_ on the _battlefield_!"

Astrid, unsurprisingly, became even more irritated on hearing this.

Finally shaking herself free, she stood upright and glared briefly at Hiccup, before looking up.

Her expression changed to one of shock, for a moment, before she reached urgently back down to the handle of her axe and tried furiously to tug it free, placing her foot on Hiccup's chest and applying considerable force in the process.

Hiccup heard the Nadder roar.

Astrid's foot moved from his chest to his face, and she tugged with a vengeance until Hiccup's shield was wrenched from his arm, with Astrid holding the axe still embedded in it.

Hiccup closed his eyes and covered his head. He knew the dragon was close.

He heard the splintering sound of shattering wood, and then small, pained noises from the dragon, along with uneven, staggering dragon-footsteps. Astrid had hit it alright.

He slowly uncurled himself. The pain in his arm was excruciating, and his face and chest were pretty sore too. He felt like he imagined that dragon did now.

"Is this some kind of joke to you?"

Hiccup lifted his head in surprise to see Astrid towering and glowering over him.

"Our parents war is about to become ours" she continued menacingly. "Figure out which side you're on". She pointed her axe, still wearing a small remnant of his shield wedged onto the blade, threateningly at Hiccup, then stalked away.

Hiccup sat up, stunned, watching her go, as an unsettling thought wormed its way into his head.

He was beginning to understand exactly whose side he _was_ on. And it certainly wasn't hers.

* * *

Holding the shield out in front of him, trying to shelter as much of himself as possible from whatever lay beyond, Hiccup edged his way towards the clearing.

He'd spent the early part of that afternoon scouting out the area around the cove, and he'd come across what he thought was a way down into it. Having surreptitiously stolen one of the shields from the blacksmith's forge, and a large cod from the tribe stockpile, Hiccup had set off into the woods in mid afternoon.

Certainly, he was now demonstrably unhinged. Here he was, entering an area in which an irate and wounded Night Fury was trapped, and hoping not to get eaten.

Then again, why would it matter if he did die? The village clearly would be better off without him.

He stole further forwards, extended an arm, and lobbed the fish into the clearing. Immediately, he hunkered down behind the shield and waited for the dragon to pounce.

He heard nothing.

He peered out from above the shield. The fish lay where he'd thrown it.

Thinking perhaps it hadn't landed far enough into the clearing, Hiccup stood and made to step forward.

He was stopped abruptly, as the shield jammed solid between the two rocks in front of him.

He sighed, and twisted the shield in vain, attempting to remove it. It wouldn't budge.

Just his luck.

He crouched low, edged underneath the shield, picked up the fish and crept into the cove unprotected. With a Night Fury nearby.

Hiccup peered into the shaded, sunlight dappled meadow before him. He couldn't see anything.

He scanned the shore of the lagoon. The only movement was the scurrying of small voles and shrews, and they were few and far between.

Hiccup looked to his left.

There, atop a rock and crouching low, was the great black dragon he'd come for.

Hiccup's breath caught in his throat and he let out an involuntary cry of alarm. The dragon's eyes were narrowed and its ears back against its neck. It was suspicious.

On the other hand, Hiccup wasn't dead yet. This was a good start.

Keeping low and moving slowly, the dragon slunk off the rock and slowly moved round to face Hiccup. It kept its head low. Its pupils were mere slits in jade greed irises.

Tentatively, Hiccup held the cod out in front of him, offering it to the dragon. Now was the moment of truth.

The dragon sniffed the air in front of it, uncertain as to whether the boy was a threat or not. It moved forwards cautiously, all the time eyeing Hiccup and the fish in his hands. Gradually, the dragon's pupils widened, becoming friendlier, and it opened its mouth slightly, as if inviting Hiccup to give the fish to it.

This lasted but a moment, however. The dragon seemed to catch sight of something it didn't like and, in the blink of an eye, hunkered low to the ground again, growling and snarling at Hiccup. The boy recoiled slightly, and thought frantically what he might have done to alarm the great untamed beast before him.

He realized. He'd brought his dagger with him, and the dragon, with its keen sense of smell, had caught the slightest of metallic tangs in the air that told it something was awry.

Slowly Hiccup reached down and moved his fur vest away so that the dagger was in plain sight. The dragon grumbled, discontented. Slowly, Hiccup reached down, and placed his hand on the hilt of the dagger, intending to throw it clear, to make it plain he was no threat.

The dragon growled furiously and tensed the moment Hiccup rested his hand on top of the dagger. Slowly, Hiccup took it out of his belt and dropped it quickly to the ground. It landed on the tip of the blade and fell to the ground.

The dragon didn't relax. It still growled and stared straight at the offending weapon.

Hiccup prodded the earth next to the dagger with his booted toe, and picked the blade up so that it rested on the top of his foot. Balancing it there, he flicked his ankle so that the blade flew behind and away from the two of them, landing with a soft splash in the lagoon.

The dragon tracked it seamlessly with its eyes. Seeing it enter the water, it stared at the point it had sunk from for a moment, before suddenly straightening up and looking at Hiccup expectedly, with pupils now dilated and ears upright, flicking curiously. The dragon looked surprised, and no wonder, Hiccup mused. No human had _ever _thrown their weapon away in front of _any_ dragon before.

Hiccup held the fish out again.

Sniffing the air, the dragon stepped forward and craned its neck. It opened its mouth wide this time, expectant. Clearly, it was hungry.

Hiccup glanced downwards at the dragon. What he saw confused him.

He saw gums within the dragon's vast mouth, but no teeth.

"Huh? Toothless?" he wondered out loud. "Could've sworn you had -"

He didn't get any further than that. Rows of razor-sharp canines shot out of the dragon's gums, and it grabbed the fish so fast that Hiccup for a moment feared for the fate of several of his fingers. It took the Night Fury all of two seconds to polish off the cod. It seemed a mere morsel to the dragon, and yet Hiccup had barely been able to carry it one-handed.

Slightly stunned, Hiccup finished his sentence regardless.

"- teeth…"

The dragon's gaze landed back on Hiccup, and it advanced on him, purring levelly. Its intentions were clear.

It wanted more fish. Immediately.

Hiccup stumbled backwards, sputtering platitudes and trying to dissuade and halt the inexorable march of the evidently hungry Night Fury, whilst cursing himself for having had neither the foresight nor the carrying capacity to bring more than a single cod.

"I don't have any more!" he finally admitted, having fallen to sit against a rock with the dragon staring at him from mere inches away. It wasn't inherently threatening, but nonetheless, this was a Night Fury. Hiccup was on edge.

The dragon's expression changed. Its eyes rolled up into the back of its head, and it began to make small, strange chuffing noises. Hiccup noticed its throat undulating. It looked like it was trying to regurgitate something.

Hiccup's thoughts did not progress further than this, as the dragon abruptly vomited the still-intact rear half of the fish it had just eaten onto Hiccup's lap.

Apparently satisfied, the dragon sat back on its haunches, resting its wings on the ground, pupils wide and ears up. It looked curious, expectant even. Hiccup couldn't fathom the Night Fury's actions. Dragons were not known for getting rid of half of a perfectly good fish, instead of eating it.

The boy and the dragon stared each other down for a long moment, each seemingly waiting for the other to do something.

Finally, the dragon broke the deadlock. It glanced down at the fish tail in Hiccup's lap, then back again.

Hiccup's eyes shot down to the regurgitated fish. Surely the dragon couldn't possibly mean…?

He sighed. Apparently it did.

Slowly, dreading the consequences, Hiccup brought the raw fish to his mouth and took a bite out of it, grimacing as he did so.

The dragon flicked its ears, apparently happy to see Hiccup eating the meal it had so kindly given him.

With his cheeks still full of foul-tasting raw fish, Hiccup held the remainder out, offering it back to the dragon. He hoped he'd done enough to satisfy it.

His hopes were dashed, moments later, when the dragon made a small yet pointed swallowing motion.

Hiccup's shoulders slumped and he made a small noise of protestation, but he knew the game was up. _Ah well,_ _needs must_, he thought resignedly.

He tried to force the rancid mixture down his throat. At the first attempt, he retched and nearly vomited. Steeling himself, he managed to ignore his gag reflex, and the fish slid unappetisingly down his gullet.

He winced and glanced back at the dragon. It smacked its lips, seemingly enquiring if Hiccup had enjoyed his meal.

Marvelling at the dragon's apparent intelligence, and the humanity in its expressions, Hiccup merely smiled back to convey – lie – that he had indeed.

The dragon frowned inquisitively at him.

Then, it did something wonderful.

Hiccup saw the edge of its mouth twitch and stretch. He watched in reverent awe as the dragon haltingly pulled its lips apart and held them there. Its teeth were retracted and its eyes slightly squinted with the effort.

He was watching a Night Fury smiling back at him.

Encouraged, and still stunned and disbelieving, Hiccup reached his hand out tentatively towards the dragon. He wanted to see if it would let him.

It wouldn't. The dragon's awkward attempt at a smile quickly formed into a snarl and it whooshed across to land on the other side of the lagoon.

Hiccup watched as he saw the dragon gently flame the ground underneath it to warm it up, and then curl up and nonchalantly put its head down.

The dragon seemed more human to Hiccup then than many of the Vikings he knew.

He stole silently around the lagoon and sat cross legged in front of the dragon. It lifted its head and noticed him there. Hiccup could've sworn he saw its shoulders slump, and he was convinced he heard it sigh in exasperation as it very deliberately shifted its body to face away from him, and moved its tail to cover its face.

Not dissuaded, Hiccup reached his hand out, intent on touching the Night Fury somehow.

As his hand was mere inches away from the Night Fury's tail, it swept away, and the dragon glanced at him again, looking not a little irritated. It seemed to want its peace. Hiccup, spooked, was only too happy to oblige. He retreated back to the other side of the cove and picked up a twig. He began idly doodling in the sand and earth that lay pristine on the ground.

Hours passed. Hiccup scarcely noticed the transit of the colour of the sky from azure to cobalt to sapphire blue, and then to royal purple streaked with brilliant red and imbued with lustrous orange. He didn't want to leave. He had too much to think about. In any event, he doubted anyone in the village would notice his absence at this point. It had only been half a day. Hiccup, in his bitterness, postulated that it would probably take a week and a half of unbroken disappearance on his part for anyone in the village to become concerned at all.

He heard a rustling behind him and a shadow fell across the ground he was still idly sketching on.

He glanced to his right. The dragon was sitting next to him, on its haunches mere inches away, tracing the path of the twig in the earth with wide, curious eyes and purring.

Hiccup kept his nerve, with some effort, and carried on drawing. It was perhaps of some help that he so happened to be drawing the very dragon that was sat next to him.

The dragon seemed to become more and more interested. Finally, it jumped up eagerly and paced away purposefully behind him. Hiccup heard the splintering of wood and, confused, turned to see the dragon gripping what looked like an entire sapling trunk lengthwise in its mouth.

The Night Fury dashed eagerly back over to him, touched the tip of the trunk into the earth, and began spinning and running excitedly round Hiccup, tracing all manner of swirls and odd shapes haphazardly into the dirt.

Hiccup could only watch transfixed. The dragon moved in rough circles around the rock he was sitting on, leaping this way and that, seeming to enjoy itself immensely. A couple of times, it got so carried away that it managed to whack Hiccup with the upper branches of the sapling. Only after a long while did the dragon relent, standing to the side, surveying its work, nodding slightly to itself and seemingly satisfied. It purred in contentment, an odd warbling sound that Hiccup, strangely, found immensely soothing.

He too gazed at the dragon's work. He was completely surrounded by lines that crossed each other, forming all sorts of odd shapes. His own drawing sat undisturbed in front of him.

He went to walk away from the rock he'd been sitting on, glancing out towards the lagoon absentmindedly.

He heard the dragon growl suddenly. He tensed and snapped his attention back towards it. Its eyes were narrowed and its ears back. For some reason, it had abruptly become very angry.

He noticed his front foot was resting on a piece of one of the dragon's lines. Cautiously, he lifted it free, and the dragon's growls immediately stopped. Its eyes widened and softened, its pupils went from angry slits to friendly circles, and its ears sprang back up.

Hiccup understood now.

Careful to avoid stepping on any more lines, Hiccup began navigating his way out of the dragon's maze. Watching his feet, he spun and pirouetted himself, much as the dragon had done, as he went from gap to gap.

He heard the dragon exhale not two feet from him. He stopped and glanced up. He'd ended up, due to his not paying attention to where he was going, practically standing under the dragon's nose.

It fixed him with a profound and understanding look, its eyes wide and deep with unsettling intelligence.

Hiccup hesitated. All that he knew of dragons was changing, and he'd seen enough that day to know all he had been taught about them was wrong. However, this was still a creature that, if it so chose, could kill him as soon as look at him. Hiccup remembered the dragon's attitude from earlier that day, the last time he'd tried to touch it. Did he risk it?

He steeled himself. Sometimes leaps of faith were all a person had at their disposal, to make things right. He had no idea where this was going or where it would end, but he sensed a pivotal moment in the lives of both him and the dragon opposite. One that he would be foolish to let slide from him unfulfilled.

He stretched his hand out to the dragon.

It seemed to flinch slightly, growling in a warning, not threatening, manner. It seemed slightly nervous, and uncertain. Much as Hiccup was.

He withdrew his hand momentarily, and considered. He was reminded of finding the dragon for the first time in the forest clearing, trapped and, he now knew, wounded. He'd not been able to find it within himself to kill it. He realized now that was because of how frightened it had looked. It had surprised him, thrown him off guard. Dragons were supposed to be fearless. They weren't supposed to have any emotion at all.

And yet…

This was the crux, Hiccup realized. One of them was a fearsome and lethal dragon, the other a scrawny nuisance of a Viking. Yet, in so many ways, they were so similar to each other. And each had feared the other as much as was reciprocated. Breaking that barrier…Hiccup didn't know what it would bring. But he imagined then what it _could_ bring, and his heart fairly soared within him.

He felt that the dragon was ready to trust him. He would do the same. Closing his eyes, he looked away and downwards, took a deep breath, and again stretched his hand towards the dragon.

A long time passed, stretching into full eons, it seemed to Hiccup. He held his nerve, held his head down, and still held his arm out.

Then, finally, he felt the dragon's nose, warm to the touch, settle gently into the palm of his outstretched hand.

Hiccup realized he'd been holding his breath. Exhaling, almost in shock that this had actually come to pass, he stole a glance at the dragon.

Its eyes were closed peacefully, and its nose was rested in his hand, just as he'd felt it. It fitted perfectly.

The dragon held its head there for a moment longer, then moved backwards a fraction and broke the connection. The moment left, and it snorted, shook its head slightly, and vanished, moving rapidly yet silently away.

Hiccup did not watch it go. He stood and stared straight ahead.

This meant so many things. A dragon had put its trust in him and he the same to it. This was perhaps the ultimate betrayal of his tribe, but not entirely to his surprise, he found he didn't care. Perhaps, he mused, he wasn't really one of them. He certainly felt closer now, to this dragon, than he had ever felt to any of his so-called comrades. Even his father.

To Hiccup, this did not feel merely like the conclusion of his attempts to befriend the dragon, and nothing more besides. It felt like something much, much more momentous. It felt like only the beginning.

* * *

**Again, I appreciate that it's been nothing but a movie-novelization so far, but if you review, I'd like to hear what you think about how well I write descriptively. That's obviously important for later in the story!**

**Incidentally, please do review! =P**


	3. Learning to Fly

****

Shortish chapter with minor deviations and a lot of description, and I hope it's nice to read!

Basically sets the scene for Ch4.

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 3**

**Learning to Fly**

The light of the fire spilled into the cold night air, rapidly fading to nothing in the impenetrable surrounding darkness, as the teenagers sat around, rapt with attention, listening to Gobber's stories.

Notionally, this was their debrief, this time being conducted on one of the disused catapult platforms that stood near to a back entrance to the blacksmith's forge. However, this particular 'debrief' had predictably and almost immediately become instead, a storytelling session for their tutor. Hiccup hadn't heard anyone speak a word about the events in the ring that day.

Instead, Gobber was regaling the teens with the tale of how he'd come to lose his right leg and left arm.

Hiccup, naturally, wasn't paying attention. He knew the story backwards, thanks to his apprenticeship with the same man. The boy sat in contemplation of something else entirely.

His whole world had been turned on its head. He knew now that every word said to him in anger, derision, scorn, and tutelage about dragons, was false. It was unquestioned fact in the village that dragons were stupid, emotionless and vicious pests that posed an inherent threat to all Vikings simply by existing. Yet, Hiccup had just befriended one. One whose intelligence was manifest in its eyes. One whose friendship was more profound already than anything any Viking had had to offer him. He began, with spite in his heart, to wonder if in fact it was the Vikings who were stupid, blind, emotionless and vicious.

Certainly, most of them were pests, at least as far as he was concerned.

Snotlout was the classic example. To someone of Hiccup's intelligence, the brawny, brainless teenager's incessant and over-masculinised ranting grated considerably. He held his peace and listened wearily, for want of something better to do.

"I swear I'm so _angry_ right now!" Snotlout was growling, trying his best to sound dangerous and fearsome. "I'll avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot. I'll chop off the legs of every dragon I fight!" He paused. "With my face!" he added.

Hiccup cringed inwardly. It was about as transparent an attempt to get into Gobber's good books as could be imagined. However, it astonished Hiccup to see that it appeared to have worked.

Gobber gesticulated, getting into the spirit of the conversation. "No, no! It's the wings and tails you _really_ want!" He addressed the whole group. "If it can't fly, it can't get away. A downed dragon… is a dead dragon!"

Silence followed.

_A downed dragon is a dead dragon_. Hiccup turned the words over in his head and thought.

_Toothless is downed. He can't fly._

Hiccup's eyes widened slightly at the realization he'd unwittingly given the dragon a name, remembering his reaction to seeing the Night Fury's teeth retracted for the first time.

It was, he realized, an utterly ridiculous name for such a powerful dragon. However, he knew that was his name. It just fitted.

His growing attachment to this mythical creature was slightly alarming. Merely 2 days ago he was professing his desire to kill it. However, he now felt concern.

The dragon had shown him compassion, even friendship. This was not something that had ever been forthcoming to him from any human. And this dragon would die if he did not regain the power of flight.

There was no way to grow back a tailfin. But perhaps he could make one.

Enraptured in his own thoughts, Hiccup did not hear the continuation of his classmates' conversation. He didn't care what they were saying anyway.

He merely slipped away down the stairs, off the platform, and quietly into the forge.

He lit a candle, sat down and thought. Hard.

_I know the shape of Toothless' remaining tailfin_, he thought, _I can base my version off that._

He knew this would be at best a makeshift solution to begin with. But it would be a start.

He began sketching.

* * *

The rest of the night was spent furiously designing, refining, smelting, shaping, sewing and fitting. Hiccup worked feverishly, almost possessed. He had never felt this determined of anything in his life, and he also knew he needed to be done by the morning. Gobber, being a blacksmith and an experienced dragon fighter to boot, would know exactly what the contraption was if he ever saw it, or any of the sketches of it.

Finally, as the sun began to rise, Hiccup stood surveying his finished prosthetic tailfin. Leather straps were to encircle the end of the dragon's tail, and they held a single metal spar from which others protruded, hinged so that they could be retracted and easily stored. Thin sheets of pliable leather were stretched between the spars, becoming taut when the whole apparatus was extended to its fullest span, naturally forming a perfect mirror image of the shape of the tailfin Toothless still had attached to his tail.

The whole thing was impossibly light – an absolute necessity.

Hiccup felt no need to see anyone else or speak to them. He felt himself subconsciously growing even further apart from his tribe. Their company was sure to bring nothing but scorn and disdain.

He reached for an empty fish basket, shouldered the tailfin, and slipped off, into the forest, softly lit by the fluid orange glow of a summer sunrise, to find his friend.

* * *

He spent that morning fishing, knowing now the dragon's affinity for this particular form of meat. He was pleasantly surprised when, besides the usual catch of salmon, trout, cod and the occasional haddock, he snared a bright yellow and black eel.

He had no idea if dragons liked all fish, but this looked like an interesting one to try.

By late morning, he'd filled up the fish basket. He set off back to the cove, running over in his head his plan to get the tailfin attached to the dragon.

He predicted Toothless would be pretty excitable around such a large quantity of fish as this. However, once he'd settled down to feeding, Hiccup felt pretty confident the dragon would be too distracted to notice Hiccup fiddling around with his tail.

_I'm calling the dragon 'he' now_, Hiccup mused. _I wonder if that's important…_

He reached the same narrow gorge he'd originally entered the cove by, and with no hesitation this time, strode forward and into the sunlight.

The dragon was sitting in plain view, ears twitching in curiosity as he idly scratched away at a rock with a single one of his claws.

"Hey, Tooooothless" Hiccup crooned, hoping not to surprise the dragon.

The dragon's head snapped round and he gave a delighted warble, bounding over to Hiccup.

_I've definitely given him the right name_.

The dragon immediately began sniffing the basket Hiccup was carrying over one shoulder, purring as he realized the nature of its contents.

Grinning ear to ear, Hiccup dropped the basket to the floor and kicked it over, fish spilling out of it in copious quantities.

Toothless leapt forward eagerly, clearly still very hungry. He began happily nosing through the pile, chirping whenever he found a new type of fish that, clearly, he liked.

Moments later, though, he froze and backed up, growling, eyes narrow.

Hiccup's brow creased. He bent over to see what had upset the dragon, and caught sight of the eel's tail poking out of the pile of fish.

He picked it up and looked at the dragon questioningly.

He received a loud and frightened screech by way of answer

_Well,_ Hiccup thought, _that answers that question_.

He tossed the eel aside hurriedly and the dragon calmed, still huffing occasionally. Hiccup could've sworn he saw Toothless roll his eyes indignantly.

Eventually though, he nosed back into the pile of fish, and very quickly resumed his happy warbling.

Satisfied Toothless' attention was occupied, Hiccup strolled nonchalantly round to the dragon's tail, trying desperately to act innocent.

The dragon didn't seem to care. He was busy eating.

Hiccup knelt down and positioned the main spar along the length of Toothless' tail, matching the dragon's own single tailfin. He pushed it up to rest against the tail, and wrapped the straps around the scaled black skin. He pulled the buckles tight, making sure they wouldn't slip, and sat back.

Though the fin was not yet extended, it matched the other tailfin perfectly for length. Hiccup felt a small glow of pride rise in him. A great or powerful Viking he was not, but he was a better craftsman than anyone gave him credit for.

He sat back on his haunches and watched the dragon closely. For the moment, Toothless was still occupied with his breakfast, but Hiccup knew it wouldn't be long before he noticed the new addition to his tail.

Sure enough, the dragon glanced back at him, twitching his ears in happiness and purring. Hiccup pointed to the prosthetic, and the dragon's gaze fell on it.

His ears went to their full upright position and he rumbled questioningly at Hiccup. Slowly, the dragon moved his tail around to sniff it cautiously, seemingly unable to work out what it was.

Hiccup reached over, and gently tugged it to its fully open position

The dragon practically leapt into the water in surprise. His eyes went wide and he swished his tail around, testing the weight, before roaring happily and, to Hiccup's horror, taking off.

The fin, not having anything to hold it open, instantly snapped shut again, and shortly, Toothless plummeted to earth.

He warbled in confusion, gazing again at the new prosthetic tailfin. Hiccup hurried over.

"It isn't ready for you to fly with yet!" he admonished. "I was just seeing if it fitted!".

He was interrupted by the dragon nuzzling his chest, eyes closed and purring softly. Hiccup knew exactly what he was trying to say, in his own way.

_Thank you._

Hiccup smiled. They were on their way.

* * *

The next month passed in a blur of tests, tweaks and adjustments. First, Hiccup tried attaching a line to the first rib of the prosthetic, and experimented with sitting on the dragon's back and holding it open, with the dragon's tail fully extended.

Toothless had seemed very eager to get going, and this time was no exception. No sooner had Hiccup pulled the fin open than Toothless leapt into the air. Recovering from the shock, Hiccup grimly held onto the string. The dragon was able, essentially, to hold himself in the air, but he couldn't steer, and the moment Hiccup tried pulling on the fin to adjust their heading himself, the dragon went the opposite way to that which he was expecting, and he was thrown clear, off the dragon's back and into the lagoon.

Explaining to the village afterwards how he had become so drenched had been a difficult one to pull off.

Slowly, and in response to their experiences, the apparatus developed. A harness and leather saddle, along with another harness that went across Hiccup's chest, held Hiccup on the dragon during flight via two elastic cables. Steel rings encircled the base of Toothless' front legs, with grooves for the control cables for the tailfin. Stirrups allowed Hiccup to rest his feet, giving him better purchase, and one of these attached to the control cable for the prosthetic.

Quite how Hiccup had produced all this, in the forge, without anyone noticing, he wasn't sure. Nonetheless, the time came to try it out.

Fitting the harness was now a twenty minute job for Hiccup, and sometimes the dragon was so excitable it was hard to get him to keep still for that long. Nonetheless, one day in mid autumn, Hiccup mounted up, attached the cables that held him onto Toothless' saddle, and, steeling himself, took off.

They'd had small, halting test flights before. They'd practiced using the apparatus together in mock flight, by the use of a post, a tether and a windy cliff top. Hiccup had taught himself the various effects the different positions of the tailfin had on Toothless' flight behaviour. It seemed not that he was dictating the flying to Toothless, but rather that both their efforts combined, Toothless' and Hiccup's, kept them aloft and allowed them to fly.

That had merely been a time of learning. Nothing, _nothing,_ could quite have prepared Hiccup for what came next.

The sea shimmered brilliant cobalt blue thousands of feet below as they screamed upwards, at magnificent speed, into the sun-drenched sky. Hiccup felt the air tug insistently at his hair and face, seeming to wash away all the stress of dragon training, all the resentment and spite towards his fellow Vikings, leaving him only with euphoria.

They glided together between mighty cliff faces, long declared impassable, by sea or foot, by the tribal elders. No Viking had ever been here before.

They soared, turned, banked, spun and twisted, sharing their joy together. Hiccup because, for the first time, he felt free from the disdain of his peers and elders. Toothless because, for the first time in a month, he was flying like a Night Fury should.

Hiccup saw things he'd never dared to dream he'd see. The island of Berk, resplendent in the midday sun, spread out far below them, the sharp relief of the cliffs, the gently rolling hills, the mist-wreathed forests encircling. And the village. How idyllic it looked up here. Hiccup did not feel any great sense of home for that place. There was nobody there who much cared for him. It wasn't _really_ home.

Home felt like where he now was. Aloft. Flying.

At the end of it all, though, came the singular affirmation of their friendship. Already they had a close bond. But the sight of the close-packed sea stacks that rose out of the water off Raven Point was too tempting for either of them to resist.

Toothless tucked in his wings, and they dived.

The sea, so peaceful moments ago, rushed to meet them in a blur. Levelling off with the dragon's wings skimming the crests of the waves, the rocks sped towards them. Hiccup hunkered down in the saddle and he felt Toothless roll his shoulders and tense, ready.

They aimed for a gap, and dived in.

Spines of rock flashed and flitted past on all sides. Acting together and on primal instinct, Hiccup adjusted the stirrup in sympathy with Toothless' own movement, each helping the other fly. They rolled, ducked, and slalomed between the needles of granite, utterly focused, utterly exhilarated. Adrenaline coursed through Hiccup's every vein.

They saw daylight, and barrelled towards it, emerging out of the gloom into the bright day again.

Hiccup knew he'd found his truest calling. He'd never felt better in his whole life.

He raised his arms aloft and screamed his joy to the heavens. His dragon roared below.

This was him.

* * *

**There! Ch4 should follow very soon...thanks to all who've reviewed so far, please keep it up!**


	4. Angry, Cold and Spiteful

**Here's 4! This is where it starts to really get away from the movie, and hopefully I've manged to convey the emotions and themes well.**

**In other words - start here if you don't like reading scenes you already know about! =D**

**Reviews;**

**Toothless-the-nightfury - yeah, I was slightly aware of that as I was writing chapter 2, but if I'm honest I just wanted to blat my way through that and get to the bits where I was starting to change things. Chapter 3 does contain a bit of Toothless-Hiccup bonding that wasn't in the movie - not sure if you;ve yet read that chapter!**

**Portgas D. Nikky - thanks so much! Glad to hear you're enjoying where it's going!**

**Timore Nocturnus Caelum - thanks! I did really enjoy writing that scene, I could start going a bit OTT with all the gushy language etc =P**

**Anyhoo, here we are;**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

**Angry, Cold and Spiteful**

It was late. The sky was dark and the village stood out as a pinprick of light in a cauldron of blackness.

It was two weeks later, and practically all of Hiccup's time was now divided between flights on Toothless, which he loved, and dragon training, which he hated. Initially, he'd simply hated it because he wasn't any good at it. Now he hated it because all the time he was there he felt like he was being fed lies, about dragons _and_ humans. To be the only one to know the truth is a lonely calling.

Now though, Hiccup could forget about that. He'd been riding Toothless all day, and the sights he'd seen were beyond comprehension. It seemed he had been to the doors of Valhalla itself. And to have seen the sunset from altitude…he'd never seen anything more beautiful.

Not even Astrid.

She was physically beautiful, but she basically hated Hiccup, or at the very least, didn't care about him. That made her words to him – when there were any forthcoming - ugly, curt and condescending.

Hiccup had long since confined his juvenile crush on Astrid to the sidelines, forcing himself to forget her. Now, nature was far more beautiful to him. Nature didn't hate him.

He knew he hadn't been seen in the village all day. Despite the fact that he guessed most of Berk's inhabitants would only have noticed his absence, if at all, by the lack of chaos and things being broken – and would have been rather thankful of the fact – he felt it was time to return, at least for a night. The way things were going, he'd be out and away again at the crack of dawn the next day, and nobody would even be any the wiser.

He guided Toothless in towards the cove. Softly, silently, they landed, and Hiccup removed Toothless' and his own flying harness and stowed them in their usual spot – underneath a substantial rock outcrop, to prevent them getting rained on and consequently rusting. The sheer volume, complexity and intricacy of the design as a whole now meant that there was no way he could take it back to the village with him and have any hope of keeping it successfully hidden for night after night.

He bade his dragon farewell, and as he left, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Toothless curling up protectively next to his riding gear. Few things were more precious to a dragon than their power of flight - although Hiccup seemed to be held at the pinnacle of Toothless' affections, the dragon seemed in his own mind to have symbolised his rejuvenated power of flight within that harness, and valued it highly indeed.

The walk back to the village was relatively short, and in the time it took, Hiccup wondered what would happen if Toothless was ever discovered by his contemporaries. It didn't take much imagination. The dragon would be immediately killed – Hiccup's heart skipped a beat at the thought – and Hiccup himself would either be outcast or killed as well.

This was a troubling thought on which to enter the place that was supposed to be his home. It seemed that nowadays whenever he was out of the village he was in a good mood, and whenever he was in the village he was depressed and angry.

Still, it made a twisted sort of sense. If you grow up in a place where everyone considers you a nuisance, you will likely grow to dislike that place. Certainly, Hiccup knew that he would now feel no qualms about simply leaving. The only thing that held him back was the feeling that he didn't really know where he'd go.

This was not something that he felt would hold him back if he grew to resent the village and its inhabitants any more than he already did, however.

He trudged wearily up the hill to his house. Reaching out his hand to turn the handle on the door and let himself in, he paused. He heard voices coming from inside.

He was about to let himself in anyway, but then a single word stopped him dead.

He heard his own name.

Curiosity piqued, he quietly padded round to the side of the house and crouched down by one of the shuttered windows. He listened, and first heard his father's voice.

"We don't see him much these days".

"No, thank Odin". This voice he recognised as belonging to Ansgar Hofferson, father of Astrid. Clearly this was some sort of small social gathering at his house.

He wondered if it was still them they were talking about. He suspected so.

A voice he didn't recognise was next. "That boy really is a nuisance".

Now he was certain this was him they were talking about.

"Whoever heard of a Viking who couldn't kill a Terrible Terror with no wings?"

"I know, shocking isn't it?"

"He's a liability. If I were you, Stoick, I'd look for an excuse – any – to get rid of him. Exile him, I mean". This was Ansgar again.

"Hmm…" His father's voice.

"What do you think, Astrid?"

Hiccup's hand, which had been resting lightly on the windowsill, clenched suddenly tight. He drew breath sharply. Surely she wasn't there as well…?

"I agree with all of you".

She was.

"In dragon training, he just won't attack. He spends his time cowering away like a hatchling" Astrid went on. "Frankly I don't consider him a Viking".

This was too much for Hiccup. His eyes welled with tears. His father, his contemporaries and others, discussing him as if he were some distant object of irritation and amusement. His own _father_.

He steadied himself. He knew now what he was going to do.

He stood up slowly, fists clenched, and walked back round towards the front door.

He again heard snorts and raucous laughter emanating from inside. He could distinctly pick out Astrid amongst them.

He clenched his teeth in anger, grasped the door handle, and flung it open.

The door slammed violently against the wall behind it, and Hiccup stepped inside.

The ground floor of their house consisted of basically one room. It was in this room that they all were sat, on chairs, in a circle. A number of empty tankards lay discarded around the place, and a fire burned warmly in the hearth, in sharp contradiction to the way Hiccup felt.

He guessed someone had been about to make another snide little comment or joke, but now everyone's attention was solely on him. He didn't make eye contact with any of them, instead pacing towards the stairs and beginning to climb them. Halfway up, he stopped, and glanced back.

They were all still watching him, looking a mixture of stunned and extremely awkward.

"It's alright, carry on". Hiccup feigned nonchalance, though there was a bitter undercurrent in his voice. "I heard everything anyway".

With that, he climbed the rest of the stairs and vanished into his room.

* * *

Astrid was utterly speechless. She sat watching the staircase, mouth slightly agape in bewilderment and shock.

She wasn't alone. The whole room was silent.

She saw guilt on some faces, worry on others. On Stoick's face she saw confusion. He was a great Viking leader, but he was the first to admit he was a dreadful father, and would have been even if he'd had a boy like Snotlout – the model adolescent, dunderheaded Viking - for a son.

Plainly, the chief simply didn't know how to react.

Truthfully, none of them had ever seen Hiccup that angry or bitter. It was enough to unnerve anyone.

There was no noise from the floor above. All was silent save the crackling of the fire to remind them all this was real, and not some collective hallucination.

Her thoughts whirled within her head. At the time, she'd meant what she'd said about Hiccup.

But those bright green eyes of his had carried such hurt with him through that door and up those stairs.

Time passed. People fidgeted. Hoark and Phlegma excused themselves, saying they had things they needed to do. Astrid suspected they merely wanted an excuse to leave.

Finally, she sighed and stood up. This was doing nobody any good.

"I'll go talk to him" she said.

Nobody else seemed to want to. She heard small noises of agreement as she paced towards the staircase.

* * *

Hiccup sat at his desk, littered with sketches, rough and detailed, of dragons, and Toothless' flying harness.

He felt unwanted.

Alone.

He'd felt like this for much of his life, but never this acute.

He picked up a quill and, with trembling hands but a heart set in stone and cold as the Arctic wind that blew outside, he began to write.

* * *

Astrid slowly paced up the steps, and knocked gently at the door that she presumed to be Hiccup's.

"Can I come in?"

Normally Astrid wouldn't have bothered with this formality, and would have just walked in, but Hiccup was quite unlike anyone else in the tribe, and in fairness, he'd just been deeply insulted by several people she knew he looked up to, herself included.

She thought it best to knock.

She heard nothing by way of a response, though. Astrid waited a moment, frowning. Then, giving up on her sensitive approach, she pushed the door open.

There was nobody there.

A single candle flickered on the desk. A scrap of paper fluttered there, held down at one corner. Placed deliberately in the middle of the desk. As if it had been intended to be seen by someone else.

She paced over, confused. Where else could he have gone, if not to his own room?

She saw writing on the paper, and the ink still looked wet.

Her frown deepened. She began to read.

_To whoever reads this._

_I'm leaving. You probably know why. I doubt you'll care and I doubt you'll miss me, therefore I don't see much point in saying goodbye._

_Hiccup_

The tone was curt and hurried, as if he'd jotted it down in a matter of a few seconds.

_He must have left moments ago_, thought Astrid

A knot tightened and curled in the pit of her stomach. As much as she disliked the boy, she didn't want to be responsible for driving him out entirely.

She hurried to the window. There in the murky blackness, lit only by the thinnest of crescent moons, she could just make out a figure stalking away, carrying nothing but the weight of the world on his shoulders.

_That's him._

Before she'd even thought about it, she vaulted out of the window and landed softly on the ground. She'd thought she'd landed quietly, silently even.

But the boy immediately bolted. He didn't even glance back.

She gave chase, frantically running after him, trying to keep up. Normally she would have easily caught him, but he darted between houses and other obstacles, heading towards the treeline. He was running fast, as only the pain he felt could make him.

Her footsteps, and his, were soundless. The night was quiet and mournful and filled with the whispers of sorrow.

He reached the forests and ran headlong into them.

Without a thought, she followed.

Dark, indistinct shapes flitted past her vision as the boy ran deeper into the woods. She almost lost sight of him entirely, only catching glimpses here and there now of him disappearing behind trees several yards ahead. She ran on stubbornly, but he was losing her.

Suddenly, he turned sharply to the left and disappeared completely from her sight. Astrid, surprised, overshot and came to a halt, panting and out of breath.

She'd seen nothing but a silhouette the whole time.

Slowly, she turned and walked the way she thought she'd seen him go. She wondered what possible reason he could have had for knowing this area of woodland so well. The tribe didn't use it for anything – it was scarcely visited at all, by anyone.

Here and there she saw the occasional fresh footprint. The earth was dark here, as was the air. As was the mood.

Ahead, she could just make out a rocky overhang that it seemed she needed to travel through. The tracks went that way.

She stepped forward again.

* * *

Hiccup emerged into the cove, face set in a determined scowl.

_First they insult me, then they chase me out._

_Is it not plain enough that I'm leaving anyway?_

He didn't know who'd been the one following him – he didn't care. Their motive was clear. They wanted him gone.

His eyes sought his dragon. Though Toothless was black, and so was the night, the outline of the Night Fury stood out against the edge of the lagoon. He was stirring fretfully at the sound of Hiccup's laboured breathing and heavy footsteps.

Quickly retrieving the harnesses and tailfin from their hiding place, he ran to Toothless and shook him awake. The dragon began to chirrup happily, but stopped at seeing Hiccup's angry expression. He tilted his head curiously at Hiccup, now silent.

"Come on buddy" Hiccup whispered, "Come with me, quick!"

Toothless knew what a tone of urgency from Hiccup sounded like – it was self evident. The Night Fury followed the boy, silently.

The two of them stole away to a dark corner, on the opposite side of the cove to the entrance. Anyone walking in would not see them here.

They had perhaps a couple of minutes.

Working quicker than he ever had, Hiccup fitted the saddle, attached the tailfin and guiding cable, and fitted the harness around the dragon's chest. He threaded the control cable through the steel ring, and attached it to the stirrup.

Finally, he donned his own harness.

Then, he heard a voice, one he didn't want to hear.

"Hiccup?"

It was Astrid.

* * *

"Hiccup?"

Astrid's eyes scanned the cove. The details were indistinct at best and completely hidden at worst. It was the deadest of night and the only sound was the rustle of the pine trees. Many areas were completely hidden and cloaked in shadow.

She stole forward again. "Hiccup?" she repeated.

* * *

Hiccup attached the two cables that connected his own harness to Toothless' saddle. He was ready.

Quietly, he hunkered down, and as Toothless did the same, crouching, ready to spring into the air and away to the unknown, Hiccup found he had nothing in his heart but a distant and vague sorrow at what was coming to pass. No anger, really. No spite.

No fear. That surprised him.

He took off.

* * *

Astrid felt, rather than saw, something pass close over her head.

Her survival instincts kicked in instantaneously. She ducked low, as for but a moment, a soft yet insistent _whoosh_ filled the air. She saw nothing, but felt the gust of wind, powerful and sudden. Not natural.

She crouched low there, and wondered just what on earth was going on.

* * *

Hiccup gazed over his shoulder with stone-set hardened eyes, as he and his friend climbed steadily away into the night.

There was nothing more to be done. He was gone.

* * *

**Et Voila! Hope I managed to get across Hiccup's emotions properly.**

**It really confused me as to how to write the character of Astrid here. On the one had she agrees with the rest of the village about Hiccup's general uselessness, and is the talented warrior we all know from the movie etc etc. On the other hand, I never saw her as callous, and I feel pretty certain she would have actually been concerned about Hiccup leaving in the manner described above, if only because he's a member of the same tribe as her.**

**One other thing...please tell me what you think about the way I've used perspective shifts. My idea was to make them more frequent, and 'rapid-fire', in more dramatic scenes, and less frequent in long and descriptive scenes. I'd like to know if this has helped get the atmosphere across!**

**As always, please review! I'm getting good feedback on this, and I'm loving it! Thanks so much to all who already have reviewed!**


	5. A Fool's Errand

**Blegh. I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but hopefully you guys will like it more!**

**The feedback you guys have given, incidentally, has been invaluable - thank you all so much! I shall certainly be going back and looking again at chapters 6 and 7 based on what you've all said.**

**To those looking for an extended Hiccup-leaves fic - not just yet. Perhaps again later in the story, but for now I want the drama to come after he returns, not because he's left. That comes in the next 2 chapters after this one.**

**Anyhoo, enough prevaricating - here's hoping you'll enjoy, though to me, it does feel like I'm rushing through the plot a bit in this particular chapter.**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 5**

**A Fool's Errand**

Astrid's eyes swept frantically from side to side, scanning the blackness, looking for any sign of Hiccup.

The cove was dark and silent, and she hadn't seen him since he'd run away from the village into the forest. She'd been searching ever since, but there was no sign of the boy.

The forest was not a place to get lost, or disappear, especially given the imminent onset of winter. Though she felt no great worry, she knew the danger he was likely to be in, were he to remain here overnight.

But she realized it would do no good to keep searching now. She could barely see her hand in front of her face, such was the darkness.

She turned and began trudging back towards the entrance to the cove, her thoughts whirling in her head, and all centred on one stubborn boy.

* * *

The chief paced the room, his footsteps falling like thunderclaps on the hard wooden floorboards. There was nobody else in the house, and hadn't been for hours.

After Astrid had gone upstairs to try to talk Hiccup down from the silent rage that everyone had seen he'd been in, an hour had passed before Stoick thought it peculiar that he had not seen either of them since. He'd climbed slowly up the stairs and peeked tentatively – something in itself almost entirely alien to the great hulking Viking – into Hiccup's room.

Nobody had been there.

He immediately presumed, correctly, that Hiccup had run off somewhere and Astrid had followed. He reasoned it would do no good to follow. The boy would not, Stoick realized, be in any sort of mood to talk to him right now.

He decided to wait.

That had been half a night ago.

Stoick was unsure of himself, for the first time in a very long time. Hiccup was not normally overtly angry at all, and therefore Stoick hadn't the first idea just how long he was likely now to stay angry for. He didn't know how long it might take Astrid to calm him down.

He certainly hadn't expected Astrid to return alone, however.

Yet this was what she did, slipping silently through the front door of the chief's house just as the first tendrils of sunlight began to whisper their way over the horizon.

Stoick merely stared for a moment. Words failed him.

But only for a moment.

"Where is he?" Stoick asked, in a worried voice.

Astrid paused and looked up at him with eyes as shocked as he knew his were.

"I don't know, sir".

Stoick redoubled his stare, and his eyes widened further.

"He ran off into the western forest. I followed him, but I lost him just as he ran down into some small cove. It only had one way into it, but I spent hours searching around there, and I couldn't find him again" Astrid explained, sounding perplexed herself. "I thought we could try again to find him when it's light".

Stoick felt a sudden anger grip him in response to the boy's behaviour. It was typical of him, thought Stoick, to put himself above everyone else in the village. All thoughts of worrying for Hiccup evaporated as he turned back to Astrid.

"No. There's no need." the chieftain responded.

It was Astrid's turn to become wide-eyed.

"The boy ever was a nuisance, and nothing more" Stoick went on. "I don't see any need to try to find him."

Astrid was shocked. She agreed with Stoick's sentiments that Hiccup had been generally an irritation, but she was still unsettled to see a man reject his own son so readily, and she couldn't quite believe they weren't even going to _try _to search for one of their own that had gone missing - even if it was Hiccup.

Nonetheless, he was the chief. She bowed her head. "Yes, chief, I understand".

And with that, she left.

* * *

The weeks passed, and the village forgot him.

The initial shock at Hiccup's disappearance had been swiftly replaced with an overwhelming sense of relief. Mutterings were heard amongst villagers that the tribe as a whole was better off not having the boy around, being a nuisance. Gradually, the relief grew into euphoria, as it became known that not even Stoick cared that he had disappeared. Celebrations were held. "Good riddance!" the cry went up. Astrid joined in, as enthusiastic as any, letting herself get lost in the tide of popular opinion.

Then, as the village went about their everyday lives, the boy began slowly to slip from their minds. They did not miss him. As their routines took hold again, and the dragon raids kept on coming, gradually the villagers began to lose their memories of the boy. They lost all interest in him - it was as if he'd never lived there, never even existed. He was erased from their memories, and the village continued in its business, without missing a step. Life went on.

Perhaps to any other society it would have seemed callous, but this was a Viking village, and they were naturally given to callousness, and had a complete an utter aversion to any form of sentimentality. Guilt, remorse and regret, too, were words that existed only in the Viking vocabulary to mockingly describe the failings of their enemies. Thus, perhaps one should not judge the Vikings too harshly for their gladness to be rid of the boy. Certainly, what was to follow in the coming weeks shook all of this to the core, and changed much of it anyway.

* * *

Of course, the problems of the dragons still persisted.

The raids came as thick and fast as ever, although, as Stoick noted in minor puzzlement, they hadn't had a Night Fury attack in months.

This was scant consolation to those who kept having their houses burnt down though. It didn't need the presence of the most dangerous of all dragons for a raid to be a major headache.

Stoick was perpetually at his wits' end. The pattern of the attacks was predictable but almost unpreventable. The dragons would arrive, wreak havoc with the villagers for a while, find the pastures where the livestock were kept, and scarper just as quickly.

The Vikings' attempts to find the dragons' nest, of which there were many, tended to end badly as well.

The mists of the northeast, which hung in perpetuity over the sea there, obscured the nest from view and attack. They knew it was there, from many a scouting vessel that had seen the dragons flying back into the mists in enormous numbers, but they could never get far enough into the mists to have any hope of finding the nest. It was lost in a labyrinth of rock, shrouded from view and protected by dragons.

A new approach was needed.

Stoick spent many evenings pondering what should be done. He understood that to risk the lives of his men on another trip of the same nature would be tantamount to betrayal of the tribe. It wasn't working and it was getting good men killed. On the other hand, they needed rid of the dragons. Winter was coming and they needed their food for themselves.

In his desperation, the chieftain hatched a plan.

* * *

"Yeh're insane, Stoick".

Gobber's dulcet tones were hardly music to Stoick's ears. Nonetheless, he pressed on with his explanation.

"It's the only way we can find the nest, Gobber! It's this, or starve".

"Let me get this straight, Stoick" Gobber said, sighing and massaging his temples wearily. "You want to muzzle a Terrible Terror, tie a rope onto it, and get it to guide one of our ships to the dragon's nest?"

"Well, a Nightmare would be too big…"

"Fer the sake of Odin, I'm _not_ just worrying about what type of dragon yeh want to use! This whole plan is insane! Have y'even considered what yeh'd do when yeh got there?"

Stoick sighed himself. Gobber was a great 'sounding board' for ideas – and he was the only person who could be utterly frank with the chief and not fear for his own wellbeing – but he was seldom an optimist.

"We take the entire fleet, and the lead ship follows the dragon. When we get there, we simply kill enough dragons to frighten them into leaving".

"Yeh'd get a lot of men killed as well"

"Less than if we just sit here and let them come to us from now until eternity!"

Gobber sighed again. "I can't stop yeh, Stoick. I can only tell yeh I'm not keen on the idea. I certainly don't think it's a _good_ idea".

Stoick didn't agree. He was set on the plan, and any of Berk's residents could tell you that not even Thor could have changed his mind by then.

* * *

And so it was that they found themselves readying for war.

Gobber had gone quietly into the dragon training ring that morning and fed the Terrible Terror a sedative-laced fish paste that had put it to sleep long enough for them to muzzle it, tie a lrope around its neck, and shackle its tiny feet tightly together.

The dragon had been cataclysmically irritated when it woke up, struggling against its bonds, at once panicked and amusingly angry for such a small wretch of a pest.

The whole fleet was readied. The village was used to Stoick's plans and ideas, and how suddenly they often arose, and thus were always ready to go. It took only one morning for everything to be loaded and stowed. All the weapons, armour and equipment. Heavy catapults, anchor chains, and other massive pieces of machinery.

At the head of it all, though, a tiny dragon was tied off with a rope to the horn at the bow of the lead ship, and held down by two bulky Vikings until such time as it could be released.

It was a profoundly odd juxtaposition to watch – the two hulking, burly men, towering over the pathetic little creature.

Stoick was gambling on the dragon immediately trying to escape back to its nest upon being allowed to get airborne. Its wings had been left free for precisely this reason, and this was why it was necessary to hold the thing down until such time as they were ready to go. It hadn't been back to its nest since it had been caught years ago, and Stoick hoped it would thus be particularly eager to get back home.

The village was being practically emptied. Anyone who could hold a weapon was coming.

Against Gobber's best wishes, that had included Snotlout, Fishlegs, Tuffnut, Ruffnut and Astrid.

How they'd whooped and hollered when they'd heard. Vikings their age _never_ got to participate in full scale battles. Tuffnut and Ruffnut had been so astounded that, for the first time in living memory, they'd stopped fighting.

Snotlout had started fist-pumping the air and hadn't calmed down since.

Astrid's face had remained impassive, but inside, she felt deeply honoured. And she could feel the bloodlust rising in her already.

They'd boarded the lead ship, with Stoick and Gobber aboard, as around them, the might of Berk made ready to leave.

Stoick watched with critical eyes. Everything had to be perfect, every warrior ready. The docks bustled around him. The face of every man and woman was set in a purposeful scowl of pre-battle determination.

Stoick trusted each and every one of them. They were his tribe, and he their leader. He knew they'd follow him wherever her chose to take them.

Finally, there were no warriors left ashore.

Spread out behind Stoick's ship were thirty other Viking longboats, all packed with men standing sharp to attention.

They were ready. Stoick gave the order.

"Set sail!" came the cry in response, and the fleet navigated its way out into open waters.

* * *

Berk was out of sight.

The teenagers had never experienced this before. Berk was home to them, but more than that, for all their upbringing it had been their whole world and the only place they knew. _Everything_ they knew, was Berk. There they had grown up, made friends, gone through the rigours and rituals of daily life there. They knew nothing else.

It felt like they were leaving all that behind, as the fleet made its way towards the nest.

None of them knew just how complete the change would be. Nobody aboard any of the Viking vessels understood just what a difference that day would bring - for better or worse.

In times to come, they would look back and remember a wretched misunderstanding, and then an extraordinary act of heroism. They would see how wrong they'd been, on so many levels. They'd wished that they had known beforehands, so that tragedy could have been averted, and the life of one young boy - too young - could be saved.

But, as the fleet made its way westwards, nobody knew.

* * *

"Ack! _Toothless!_"

Hiccup tried in vain to throw the overly affectionate reptile off of himself.

He was fond of the dragon, but he most decidedly was _not_ fond of being licked half to death by him.

They were outside the cave that had been their home for the past weeks. The entrance was small – only just large enough for Toothless to squeeze through – and almost entirely hidden in the undergrowth. They'd found it by luck. It wasn't luxurious. But it was warm.

_Has it really only been a few weeks?_

Hiccup's thoughts were less and less for his old home. The memories of the place seemed odd to Hiccup. Out of context, and of another world entirely. One he didn't like.

He much preferred the solitude of the island he now found himself on.

After they'd left, they'd flown for many long and difficult hours. The full magnificence of the dawn was sweeping away the blackness that the previous night had brought before they'd seen the smallest of uninhabited, unmapped islands nestling in the vast tract of ocean that was spread out like a blank canvas beneath them.

It had seemed as good a place as any to forget the place he'd come from. So they'd made their home there.

Their sustenance was the fish they caught together. Their amusement was each others' behaviour.

Hiccup felt the bond of friendship and solidarity between him and Toothless grow stronger with every passing day. They were so different in so many ways – one of them was a scrawny human misfit, the other a legendary night-dwelling dragon – and yet they were utterly inseparable, and so similar.

Hiccup was snapped back to the present by his dragon growling playfully at him, still pinning him down.

Hiccup sighed.

"Toothless, I really need to – urgh!"

The dragon had started licking his face again.

"_TOOTHLESS!"_

Grumbling amicably, the dragon had finally relented, and curled up a few feet away in a patch of sunlight, apparently satisfied that he had shown Hiccup enough mischievous affection for the day.

Hiccup slowly stood, and surveyed the scene around him in wonderment, for the hundredth time since he'd first arrived.

Truly, he'd found paradise here. The trees scattered the rays of sunlight and threw patterns of gold and traces of sunset yellow onto the grassy earth that lay underfoot. Beyond he could see the ocean, becalmed and dazzling in the high noon sunshine. The granite face behind him glittered as if bejewelled, peppered with score upon score of the tiniest crystals of purest lustre that shimmered as he moved in front of them. Even the air was agreeably warm.

All was peaceful.

Or so the boy thought.

He was jolted out of his reverie by a startled cry from Toothless that leapt out of the space behind him.

He whirled round, and saw the dragon staring at the sky.

The Night Fury roared again.

* * *

The mists closed around the Viking fleet and seemed to swallow it whole.

The tiny dragon, held by its tether, had guided them here. It had, as Stoick had predicted, immediately taken off upon being unshackled, and had tried desperately to fly away to the north-west. When it discovered it couldn't get beyond a certain distance away from the boat, it had only tried harder. Its anguish was evident in the frantic way it beat its wings, and its fearful, panicked glances behind it, to the humans that stood on the deck, with their weapons in hand.

Stoick had grinned slightly. He couldn't deny that he derived some satisfaction from torturing these vile creatures.

Regardless, he had what he wanted. The dragon was trying to return to the nest.

They had swung around until the dragon flew directly ahead of the boat, and they'd lengthened the rope that tethered it to the boat, to calm it down so that it wouldn't tire. It had gradually calmed and settled into a steady flight, seeming to almost forget its predicament and the fact that it was being followed by thirty-one Viking ships. They had settled into following.

And now they were in the mists.

The Terrible Terror began to fret again, glancing rapidly this way and that. Stoick watched it unblinkingly. He was sure that soon, he'd need to follow the dragon closely indeed.

He shouted to the teenagers at the bow of the ship "Shorten the rope! I don't want to lose it in the mist!".

Astrid was the quickest to respond, grabbing the length of rope that ran taut from the horn of the bow, and pulling it in until the tiny, muzzled dragon was mere feet away again. She tied it off again.

The dragon didn't seem to notice the humans this time. It was preoccupied. Its eyes darted around, looking anywhere but behind itself.

"Isn't this _awesome_?" Astrid heard Snotlout whisper excitedly.

Noises of assent rose from the other teenagers.

Astrid said nothing. Her core was of steel and hardened now. She was ready.

The ship lurched to port.

Astrid hurriedly grabbed the gunwale and glanced over her shoulder, back to the dragon.

The Terrible Terror was now flying at right angles to that which it had been previously – heading to port, and the ship was following.

Astrid hunkered down. She knew they were close.

She felt the ship's heading change with greater and greater frequency and force as the dragon led them to and fro amongst the rocks and through the mist.

Finally, she felt the ship ground out.

Businesslike shouts immediately erupted. The ships behind them were hailed and told to pull alongside. Anchors were thrown overboard, landing with a cacophany of dull thuds on the ground. Men began pouring forth from every boat in the fleet - men armed to the teeth and wearing their best menacing faces.

Stoick shouted to the teenagers again.

"Get that blasted dragon stowed back away!" he bellowed, one of the multitude of instructions and directions he was belting out with astonishing rapidity, as the fleet made its landfall.

Astrid stood and looked over the side of the ship.

They'd come to rest on a beach of grey shingle, still wreathed in mist and utterly devoid of colour. Before them rose a vast grey cliff, scarred by fractures, and foreboding. All around could be seen strange shapes and formations of rock – arches, stacks, spirals, and more besides.

The Terror was still desperately trying to fly away.

It was straining, pulling pathetically against the tether and whimpering, agitated and distraught that its progress towards its nest had been so suddenly halted.

Astrid remorselessly yanked hard on the rope, and pulled it in towards her. The dragon wailed pitifully and fearfully from behind its muzzle, struggling desperately to get away as Astrid grabbed it roughly round the neck, whilst Snotlout gripped the root of its tail.

He held it down as Astrid roughly, remorselessly shackled its feet back together, and tied twining cord around the joints in the spars of its wings, holding the span of them shut and stopping it flying. Opening a hatch in the deck that led to the hold, she threw the defenceless dragon in - with more force behind the throw than was perhaps strictly necessary.

She heard it land heavily, and another pitiful, weak-sounding cry emanated from below.

She didn't care for the wellbeing of a dragon, though.

* * *

Toothless was scarcely containable in his agitation.

Hiccup fought to keep the dragon on the ground as he spread his wings and roared repeatedly, frantically, at the sky.

Hiccup couldn't understand the dragon's behaviour. Normally, Toothless knew he couldn't fly without the boy mounted on the saddle on his back. Something was clearly upsetting Toothless to the point of irrationality. And yet, the sky was clear.

"Toothless! What is it?"

The dragon turned abruptly, seeming almost to ignore the boy, and charged into the cave. Hiccup gazed after him, utterly nonplussed.

When Toothless re-emerged, however, he was clutching the prosthetic tailfin in his for-now-toothless mouth. He gazed urgently at Hiccup, then to the sky, then back again.

The boy understood instantly what the dragon was trying to tell him, to get him to do. Despite the fact he had no knowledge of any extra-sensory perception that his dragon possessed, he immediately recognised Toothless was feeling the signs, the whisperings, of something terrible beginning to happen, far off in the distance.

And the dragon wanted to go.

Without hesitation, Hiccup ran to the cave to retrieve the rest of Toothless' harness.

Hiccup would later reflect that this was the fastest he had ever harnessed his dragon up – faster even than the time he'd made good his escape from the cove. Toothless stood stock still throughout, eyes locked on the sky. Hiccup didn't fumble as he always used to. His own sense of purpose was kicking in, the adrenaline already coursing through his body. He didn't know why, but he understood that whatever was happening, wherever it was, was unutterably awful. He knew something worse had to follow.

He mounted up, steely-eyed, and the instant Hiccup had fastened himself into the saddle, Toothless was up and clear of the treeline.

Hiccup felt the urgency in his dragon's wingbeats. They were stronger than normal.

Toothless levelled off, and swung around to the west. He pressed onwards, powering forward with every beat of the dragon's mighty wingspan.

Hiccup felt their speed increase beyond anything he'd experienced before with Toothless. He hunkered down in the saddle.

He wondered what was going on. When they had left Berk, they had headed northeast, away from anything dangerous. To the west of them lay a huge expanse of ocean, and beyond that…

The dragon's nest.

Hiccup's breath caught in his throat and he gasped in horror. He didn't know how, but he suddenly knew with unsettling certainty that his father must have chosen to attack the nest again. He knew from Toothless' behaviour that this time his father must have succeeded in finding it. And Hiccup knew - without knowing why - that the whole tribe was now in terrible danger.

It almost felt like the fates were whispering in his ears.

The Vikings had spurned and shunned him even when he was notionally one of them, and now that he wasn't, perhaps, he thought, he shouldn't have cared if something dreadful befell them. Yet, he found that he did, else he would simply have turned back the moment he guessed the situation.

He didn't understand Toothless' urgency though.

Nonetheless, he urged his dragon onwards. Their speed kept growing, the very air now a blur around them.

Together they shattered the sky as they screamed towards the mists of the west.

* * *

The machines, and all the panoply of war, stood ready.

Everything was in place. Sharpened stakes had been driven into the ground and row upon row of silent Viking warriors stood to attention behind them. Three massive catapults had been erected.

Stoick stood and surveyed the cliff before him. Weak spots had been picked. A shot from a catapult would easily break through the rock to the dragon nest that, he sensed, lay just behind.

The great Viking raised a splayed hand to signal those behind him. He paused, and then clenched his fist.

Behind him, he heard several soft _whoomph_s as the projectiles were flung at the cliff face.

His eyes tracked them as they fell towards the rock.

As one, they struck, and the world fell apart around him.

* * *

**Ooh, Astrid is _very_ cruel to that poor little Terrible Terror isn't she? ;)**

**Anyhoo, please review, even if you hated it and thought I went too fast! XD**


	6. Heroism and Sacrifice

**Sooo, here's chapter 6 - it fairly closely resembles certain bits of the movie in terms of some of the sequence of events but I tried to alter the mood substantially to compensate for this. I couldn't think of a way of actually altering what happens in a way that would make it more dramatic - the scene from the movie has _buckets _of potential for drama, I just had to write it right (It's up to you lot to decide if I've managed that =D). Plus ofc, the most major difference here is that Hiccup arrives by himself, and nobody from the tribe knew anything about him or Toothless beforehand. That's basically the only change that makes it I think more dramatic.  
**

**This is really the last chapter that really bears any resemblance at all to the movie. Past this point, I plan to make it more in-depth, slowly narrated etc. I really want to explore Hiccup's and Astrid's characters in detail - I think a big post-battle multi-chapter sequence is on the cards for after this! Pacing my writing is something I do need to work on - as perhaps is character development!  
**

**Anyhoo, I really tried to make this an uber-dramatic chapter, and as always I would love to hear what you think. The reviews I've had so far - all 28 (28! 0_o) of them have been chock-full of really thoughtful and helpful feedback, and I'm _so _glad to hear most people are enjoying it! Hopefully you'll enjoy this chapter as well!  
**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 6**

**Heroism and Sacrifice**

Hiccup gritted his teeth and hunkered down behind the ears of his Night Fury, willing him onward. Together, they strained against the wind, fighting for every last bit of speed they could get.

They skimmed the ocean, travelling faster than Hiccup ever had before. For the first time, he felt like he was seeing the full limits of Toothless' flying ability. It was breathtaking. The rocks sped by on either side, blurring into one another. The wind screamed hellfire into his ears and his fingers were locked in a vice-like grip on the front of the saddle. Hiccup could feel the tenseness in Toothless' shoulders and neck. He was pushing for all his worth.

They had to get there in time.

Hiccup caught a glimpse of a red-veined and angry volcano spearing out of the sea in the middle distance before Toothless ducked beneath a sea arch and it was lost from view. They were close.

Keeping low, they slalomed between the needles of granite that protruded like splinters from the foreboding dark grey ocean around them. Rounding the last, they saw the beach the Vikings had landed on. They saw the gaping chasm in the face of the volcano. They saw the flame and inferno that engulfed all but one of the ships.

Then they saw the dragon.

Hiccup cursed involuntarily.

The beast - whatever it was - was the size of a small island, predominantly a deep and sinister grey with fearsome red spines cascading down the length of its armoured back. The scattering Vikings didn't even come up to the height of one of its claws. And it was angry. It roared, filling the air with a cataclysmic scream, and stepped forward. Hiccup felt the reverberations in his chest as the great foot fell to the beach. Hiccup saw it bite down on one of the Viking ships and merely fling it into a nearby rock stack. It splintered as if made out of matchwood.

In his head, Hiccup cursed the stupidity of his father.

Nonetheless, he and his dragon readied themselves for a fight that they knew they must lose. Hiccup tensed.

_Perhaps this is what true heroism is supposed to be_, Hiccup thought. _But I don't feel like a hero. I feel like a fool. A fool getting myself killed for a collection of people who, basically, hate me._

But he still screamed a cry of war to the heavens, as Toothless suddenly shot upwards, gaining altitude rapidly. The time for stealth was over now.

The great black dragon roared, announcing himself to the maelstrom of combat that whirled on the shingle below. The sound echoed through the air and rent it asunder as together, the Night Fury and his rider threw themselves forward and down, diving headlong and ferocious into the chaos.

* * *

"Get DOWN!" someone screamed.

Instantaneously, every Viking fell to ground. They heard an unmistakeable shrieking roar, terrifyingly familiar to every one of them, something they had all heard many times before and had always learnt to fear above and beyond anything else. Astrid, like every single one of them, tensed and waited for the end to come.

But it didn't. The moment seemed to stretch into eternity as Astrid kept her eyes clenched shut, but there was no blinding white light, no roar of death in her ears. Instead, all she heard was the _crack_ of an explosion several hundred metres away from her.

Tentatively, she looked back up.

The sight that met her eyes…she would never forget.

The enormous dragon that had emerged from the mountain moments beforehand now lay felled on the beach ahead of them. A column of purest white smoke, still interlaced with brilliant blue coils of fire, rose from its huge neck.

She looked skyward, stunned.

There, silhouetted against the gray of the misty sky, was a Night Fury.

It was cresting the apex of a loop, and as Astrid watched, it slowly rolled in the air, drew its great black wings towards its body, and dived again towards the ground.

It roared again, the sound filling the air and striking a terror instinctive within all men into the hearts of the Vikings.

Astrid glanced back to the larger, earth-bound dragon. Her eyes picked out the blood-red spines adorning the spinal ridge along its back.

_They look like death - red death._

_Red Death._

Astrid winced slightly at the realization that she had just unwittingly named the abomination of nature that had confronted them when the catapults had shattered a hole in the side of the cliff.

The gigantic dragon hauled itself laboriously to its enormous feet, each one the size of one of their ships, and it snarled again in anger at the sky.

But it didn't seem to see the screaming, plummeting Night Fury.

A second shot seemed ignite the sky as it sped towards the Red Death. It again struck the neck of the creature with a sound like the crack of a whip, and all Astrid saw was a flash of brilliant cobalt blue before the shockwave punched her square in the chest, and her self-preservation instincts took over. She fell to ground again and shielded her eyes, only looking up again after a long moment.

Her eyes tracked the black and lethal dragon as it wheeled around again for another attack

Something about its silhouette seemed odd.

The sleek line of the dragon's back was interrupted between its head and the front of its wings by an indistinct lump.

She only caught glimpses as the black dragon soared and pirouetted through the air, and she couldn't be sure if she was imagining it. The dragon described a perfect arc around behind the Red Death, which by now was once again on its feet and furiously scanning the sky, trying desperately to locate the source of the sudden assault that had been visited upon it.

The Night Fury sped straight at them from behind the creature.

"Get DOWN, everyone!" the cry went up again.

She ignored them. Her eyes were fixated on the top of the Night Fury's neck.

The lump that she'd seen took on a more distinct form as the dragon drew rapidly closer.

It looked like…

But it couldn't possibly be…

Her eyes caught a pinprick, a flash of emerald green in the dark shape atop the darker dragon.

_No_

_Not…_

The Night Fury let loose a third shot, again striking the Red Death on the neck. The creature roared and crumpled again, and the Night Fury speared unhindered straight towards them.

In the fractions of a second that passed before the dragon pulled up and away overhead, Astrid saw him, and all doubt was erased from her mind. She saw him, riding a Night Fury.

She saw the oneness with which they moved together.

She saw the determination on his face.

She saw the steel and fire in his eyes. In his emerald green eyes.

"_HICCUP!_" she screamed, her voice full of hope, and fear, and anguish.

* * *

The entire village stood dumbfounded as they watched the birth of a hero unfold before them.

Astrid's initial revelation had been swiftly followed by a barrage of shocked, hysterical and joyous cries from those around her as they suddenly understood the ramifications of what it was they were witnessing. Not a single person was watching anything besides the Night Fury and his rider as the pair of them swooped down yet again.

Astrid watched in silent awe as the two of them whirled and tumbled through the air, with natural grace and pure ferocity born of a heart stronger than any of them had ever given him credit for. Up and around the vast creature they soared, seeming to taunt it where it stood roaring on the shingle. Up and then down again, all the time flirting with the fringes of death, travelling with incredible speed mere inches from the leviathan creature, which tried furiously to follow their movements with its eyes. But they were just too fast.

The Red Death roared again, and from its back, foreboding in the half light, began to unfurl two enormous, ragged, deep-grey wings.

* * *

Hiccup glanced over his shoulder.

The sight that met his eyes made his blood run cold, but his resolve still did not waver.

The creature was following them. Airborne.

It was flying.

He cursed under his breath.

_Well, at least it makes it easier to try to kill the thing._

Hiccup gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes as he and his dragon – his friend – again dived to skim the water, passing low under the rocks.

Hiccup held on as they weaved and passed low under arches and overhangs. Behind him he could hear the shattering of rock as the leviathan tried to follow. Using every skill he'd learnt and taught himself that wonderful summer past, and with such subtlety and finesse even as adrenaline fired his veins, he balanced the dragon in the air with the tailfin, as he and Toothless worked in utter harmony to keep themselves aloft and ahead of the surging dragon behind them.

He glanced to the sky.

It was dark and foreboding, covered in low cloud. Shrouded utterly.

Hiccup knew what he had to do.

Rounding the final sea stack, and as the becalmed grey expanse of ocean presented itself in front of him, he shouted out in a deep, strong and dangerous fury. His dragon responded, a screeching cry of determined, focused rage vaulting forth from the dragon's own anger and steadfastness.

Hiccup pulled back hard on the leading edge of the saddle, and felt the Night Fury respond in kind.

Toothless pointed his nose at the sky and beat his wings for all his worth.

They screamed upwards, a shimmer of darkest, sleekest black, knowing that they carried the hopes of hundreds of men with them up into the clouds.

* * *

In the blink of an eye, they were lost from view.

The massive form of the Red Death followed them up, it too being swallowed by the deep grey cloud that hung low above them.

The village's eyes pointed skywards.

For but a single moment, all was silent. Even the lapping of the waves on the pebbles could be heard.

But then the peace was shattered, and as if the harbinger of Ragnarok itself had come to them, flashes of brilliant blue ignited the sky, great thunderclaps reverberating through the rocks and through every man and woman that stood transfixed on the beach. One after another they came, heralding the battle that they knew raged above. It heralded the end of all they knew. It heralded the start of something great.

'_But at what cost?'_ thought Astrid, frightened despite herself, worried to her core for the boy she barely knew. The boy who fought for them all up there.

An angry orange light permeated the clouds, and the ground seemed to glow beneath their feet.

Then, out of the sky, as fast as thunderbolt, flying straight down, came the Night Fury, followed close – so close – by the Red Death.

Astrid gasped, and panic gripped her heart.

The Night Fury was not flying. It was on its back, and falling.

"_HICCUP!_" she cried again, in disbelieving horror.

She could just make out the tiny shape of the boy clinging to the dragon's neck from the saddle, now facing the ground as they rocketed downwards.

Something burned fiercely on the Night Fury's tail, flames licking around the tailfins.

All hope, Astrid thought, was surely lost.

The Red Death opened its mouth, to give certainty to the outcome. To kill the boy and his dragon.

But as it did so, so did the Night Fury. And the black dragon was much, much quicker.

A blue bolt of fire shot from the Night Fury's mouth straight into the Red Death's own, and the vast creature let out a panicked roar as its insides instantaneously erupted in flame.

Astrid saw the Night Fury roll itself slowly back over, straining against the air, and spread out its great black wings. It shot upwards, missing the gaping mouth of the dying creature by fractions of an inch.

The Red Death slammed into the ground, a maelstrom of fire vaulting upwards and outwards from the point of impact. A wall of air slammed into Astrid and the other Vikings, forcing them to ground as the fireball mushroomed upwards.

Despite everything, Astrid kept her eyes on the sky. Above the fireball and climbing rapidly, she could just make out the shape of the Night Fury.

* * *

Hiccup clung to the back of his dragon as they desperately tried to gain altitude.

Below them broiled the fire of the creature's death.

The prosthetic tail was alight and disintegrating.

With a sickening screech of overstressed metal, it broke free and fell away behind them. Hiccup felt the stirrup go slack as the control cables snapped.

Ahead, the huge, club-like tail of the dying beast loomed large.

They were going to hit it.

Hiccup braced himself.

An awful pain shot through his left leg and his breath was knocked out of him as they collided with the bony, whiplashing structure.

Hiccup felt himself spinning through the air.

Toothless was not underneath him. He was freefalling.

* * *

The Night Fury let out a cry of panic as he felt his rider leave his shoulders. He saw the boy falling, arms outstretched, below him.

The fire rushed up to meet them.

With a strength born of a fury befitting his human-given name, the dragon of all legends, the fearsome bringer of death to all Vikings, turned himself in the air and dived towards the boy, trying to reach him. To save his life.

In the past few weeks, the dragon, like Hiccup, had come to question everything he knew. He had formed a bond of friendship with the boy, so close that they were like two parts of the same.

He would _not_ lose his rider and his friend now.

Grabbing the boy with his front legs, the Night Fury swept his outstretched wings around the boy, bringing him into an embrace shielded within the fire-resistant skin.

Had he been too late? There was no way of knowing, as flames engulfed them and they fell as one to earth.

* * *

**There ya go! Hope you all enjoyed...If you do review (and PLEASE do, it's so helpful...) I'd really like to know whether you think I handled the descriptive language well, or whether my language was too convoluted - or too sparse for that matter!**

**The next chapter requires fairly substantial tweaking due to a pretty major shortfall in it that I realized in hindsight after having written it, so it may be slightly longer before I put 7 up - in the meantime, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep on reviewing! =D  
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	7. All That You Know, is Wrong

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First off, thanks for all the multitude of helpful reviews that I got for the last chapter. Really appreciate it - has been very helpful.

A longish chapter this time, in which not much actually happens but I try to explore the emotions and characters that are involved. Not sure how successful I've been - most of the focus is on Astrid, because I'm trying to make the way in which her personality and attidude towards Hiccup is changing believable. I had originally written this chapter with a much simpler version of Astrid's emotions, but I reread it and it was just not credible. Where I want it to go will have to happen a lot slower for it to make any sense - that's why I said I had to redraft it.

This is really where the meat of the story begins in earnest, insofar as the time immediately after the battle is a big juicy pot of emotion, angst and drama that will be great fun to go wallowing about in =D I'm going to try to put my own spin on it, and I do appreciate there's been a number of really fantastic post-battle fics put out already - many of which I've read and loved. Hopefully my take on it won't feel too similar to what's gone before.

**I really do wonder whether I've got the emotions right in this chapter. Astrid is beginning to care more and worry more for Hiccup - but it's hard to explain why in the form of a story, as to be honest she probably wouldn't know herself why she was beginning to have these feelings, and if I wrote it from too distant a perspective it'd look like a piece of extremely dodgy psychoanalysis devoid of both emotion and any sense whatsoever =P**

**Anyway, enough preamble - hope you enjoy! Will start writing ch8 soon, dunno when it'll be up tho...**

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* * *

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**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 7**

**All That You Know, is Wrong**

Turmoil. Utter and complete.

The cries of the Viking warriors echoed mournfully around the beach, as the dust and ash from the explosion – that which had heralded the death of the great beast – settled slowly on the loose shingle.

Chaos reigned.

Astrid could not quite believe what she had just witnessed.

Hiccup, the scrawny runt of the village, riding the most fearsome, and feared, of all dragon species, into battle.

The boy who had disappeared several weeks prior, and had not been seen since.

Dragons were evil, this they all knew. It was practically the creed they lived by. And yet Astrid, and indeed everyone, had seen the Night Fury turn itself in the air and dive after its rider, headlong into the rising inferno. Trying to save Hiccup's life.

Dragons weren't compassionate, or selfless. It didn't make sense.

Very little of anything made sense just then.

And nobody knew where Hiccup was.

People ran this way and that, scouring the beach for any sign of the boy.

Astrid merely stood, shell-shocked, as an utterly alien emotion welled deep within her and began to rise.

Sorrow gripped her heart.

If Hiccup was dead, she knew she would never be able to forgive herself.

They'd rejected him all his life, and he'd come back for them nonetheless. Very possibly he had just made the ultimate sacrifice for them.

The search went on. The shouts, barked orders, the cries of the wounded. The trauma she heard in every voice cut deep indeed.

Snotlout sat forlorn against a rock, quietly crying.

Astrid felt like doing the same. The side of her personality repulsed at the idea of showing weakness fought furiously to stem the rising tide of emotion within her, but it kept on coming.

She didn't understand her own reactions. Only days prior she had not cared at all for the boy. She hadn't even been able to summon the requisite attention required to develop a dislike of him.

He was _nothing._

Was.

Now...Astrid was torn between a thousand different feelings, but she recognised one stronger than any other – one that it was almost unheard of for her to feel. She suspected every man and woman present – and certainly every one of the teenagers – shared her acute feelings of guilt at how the boy had been treated - by all of them. Guilt at how he'd been ignored, derided as useless.

How short-sighted such thoughts seemed now. They boy had clearly done something utterly remarkable, and forged some bond or other with that Night Fury sufficient to make them willing to die for one another.

Forging a bond with a dragon was in and of itself almost unbelievable. But then again, Hiccup always had been unusual. Astrid doubted that she, or any of them, could have come close to summoning the compassion necessary to do what Hiccup had just done – put his life on the line to save a people that had done nothing but pour scorn on him his whole life.

And just as this thought crossed her mind, another cry echoed across the beach, sounding out even above the many others that flew hither and thither – a cry this time most definitely not human.

It was unquestionably the roar of a Night Fury.

Everyone froze and stared, as from the settling dust slowly emerged the sleek black form of what could only be the legendary, elusive dragon.

A couple of the Vikings, despite everything, started forward, hands reaching for their axe handles. But they were stopped in their tracks as they caught sight of Hiccup, lying limp and motionless over the dragon's back.

It walked slowly, exhaustedly, limping heavily, yet with a determination evident even from a distance.

It cried out again, in unmistakeable anguish. It almost seemed to be begging for help for its rider.

Astrid ran forward towards the Night Fury, all of her prior instincts to avoid - or kill - dragons evaporating as she approached.

Nobody followed her. They still stood motionless, and speechless.

The dragon looked up at her, and Astrid gasped as she saw the emotion manifest in its eyes.

The wide, mournful pupils that gazed back at her spoke of a grief equal to her own. This dragon _cared_ for the boy on its back.

Hurriedly, slightly unnerved by what she'd just seen, Astrid grabbed Hiccup's limp body and gently lifted him off the dragon.

She pressed her ear to his chest, hoping against hope...

_Thump._

Astrid drew breath sharply.

_Thump._

A cry of joy escaped her lips as the tears began to roll freely down her face. His heartbeat was weak, but it was there. She held him tightly, her emotional armour that she'd been wearing all her life deserting her, as she broke down sobbing.

"H-He's alive!" she shouted back, her voice choked with emotion, scarcely believing it herself.

Now, she heard footsteps behind her as the Vikings, as one, overcame their fear of the dragon and rushed towards Astrid and the boy she cradled in her arms.

Stoick the Vast headed the charge.

Cheers and cries of relief, and of elation, rang out where only moments ago, all that could be heard were cries of anguish and confusion.

Astrid looked up once again at the dragon.

Its eyes were on Hiccup and they did not deviate, or leave the boy even for a second. Not even as a village's entire population of warriors descended upon it.

Astrid could only gaze in wonder.

The Night Fury warbled softly and nosed at Hiccup's forehead.

Everything that any of them knew about dragons was being scattered to the four winds today.

Stoick stared wide-eyed at the dragon for a long moment, disbelieving, before he hesitantly reached down and took his son from Astrid's arms.

However, as Stoick lifted the boy away, she caught sight of something that, all over again, seemed to stop her heart.

"Oh Gods, look at his leg!"

She whispered it, yet everyone heard her.

Hiccup's lower left leg was a mangled mess of flesh and shards of bone. His foot and the lower half of his shin was missing completely, and the area up to just below his knee was utterly shredded. Small, sharp fragments of bone mingled with the ribbons of tissue that coiled and trailed haphazardly around each other. Sections of the leg were charred and burnt randomly and indiscriminately, ugly swathes of blackened skin and flesh that covered perhaps a third of what remained of his lower leg.

Stoick caught sight of the wounds and gasped in horror, as Astrid felt yet another tide of confused warrior's anguish rush over her.

To have seen the boy alive, only to then have him die...

Astrid knew that despite all her past pretensions to have complete command of her emotions, she couldn't have coped with it.

Gobber stepped forward from the crowd. Astrid was used to seeing the double-amputee blacksmith in jovial and jocular spirits - that was just how he was. To see the grim expression that now beset his features unnerved her.

She heard him mumble something to Stoick, and saw the chieftain shake his head vehemently in response.

"It's the only way, Stoick" Gobber said, louder now, as he rested his hand on Stoick's shoulder in a gesture of solidarity.

Astrid saw the chieftain's shoulders slump, and just above the noise of the breeze, she heard him mutter.

"Do it".

Gobber nodded solemnly, and stepped forward towards the boy. Stoick merely stared at his son.

Astrid didn't understand what was going on until she saw Gobber produce a knife from beneath his cloak. A small cry of horror escaped her lips involuntarily as she realised.

This was nothing, however, compared to the way the dragon reacted.

It was itself clearly injured and not completely mobile, but the instant its eyes caught sight of the blade it let out a wail that shook every pebble on the beach. In the blink of an eye it had taken the boy within its front paws and drawn him in towards its chest. Its wings encircled the boy, and the dragon buried its face in the gap, nuzzling the boy who was now all but hidden from view from the rest of the Vikings. The dragon whimpered as it tried desperately to wake its rider up.

Astrid, once again, was struck dumb, as it seemed was the entire contingent of them. This dragon was trying to _protect_ Hiccup, and keep him out of what it perceived to be harm's way.

_Just how close are these two to each other?_

_Closer than Hiccup ever was to any of us, _Astrid realized with yet another accompanying pang of guilt that struck close indeed to the quick. It was painful to remember.

The day's events had shaken and destabilised the very foundations of their beliefs, and Astrid could see the conflict in every single one of her comrades' eyes. There was not a man or woman amongst them who had been brought up to see dragons as anything other than emotionless pests, who wouldn't bat an eyelid at killing a human. Yet sitting there, right in front of them, was pretty convincing evidence to the contrary, Astrid thought. This dragon had saved the boy's life – clearly reason enough to stop it being instantaneously killed the moment it presented itself, with Hiccup on its back, to the men gathered on the beach.

Now, it seemed, it was trying to save Hiccup from the amputation of his leg.

Astrid's breath caught in her throat as the full ramifications of this hit home. Hiccup had just done himself a mortal – and potentially still fatal – injury, whilst protecting them.

Astrid had considered herself brave before, but standing there, with all of her limbs still intact, her belief system shredded and scattered to the four winds, and the memories fresh in her mind of how she'd treated Hiccup in the preceding years of both their adolescences, all pretence abandoned her. She felt like a coward, as she suspected they all did.

She could tell by their downturned eyes.

The burning ships crackled in the background. But as Astrid stood there, her ears began gradually to pick out another sound, coming from roughly the same direction.

A panicked screeching could be heard faintly above the ambient noise.

It didn't sound like a Night Fury to Astrid. If anything, it sounded like -

_Oh Gods…_

She turned and sprinted towards the burning longboats, as she remembered the Terrible Terror lying shackled, unable even to fly, in the hold of one of the ships.

She'd just seen the compassion a dragon was capable of giving, and now memories flooded back to her of how she'd roughly held the dragon down, ignored its pitiful cries, and thrown it cruelly into the hold whilst it was unable even to break its own fall.

Guilt rose within her yet again at the thought, even as she swung herself over the gunwale of the burning ship.

Flames dances all around her, but at the bows she could make out the hatch that, earlier, she'd thrown the dragon down into. She flung it open, ignoring the heat that threatened to burn her palms, and peered inside.

The tiny dragon was writhing pitifully on the floor, trying desperately to escape. As Astrid watched, it craned its head round and tried desperately, frantically to bite the twining cord that held its wings shut, but the muzzle got in the way and the dragon wailed as it only tried harder to get free.

By any measure, thought Astrid, this was inhuman.

Gritting her teeth, Astrid jumped down into the hold, and rushed over to where the Terrible Terror lay. She grabbed it with both hands, ignoring the rising temperature in the confined space and the panicked squealing that the creature let out. Clearly, and not surprisingly, it was less than trusting of Astrid – and very, very frightened of her – given how she'd treated it only a couple of hours previously.

Nonetheless, she held the dragon firmly, and clambered back out into the fresh air above.

The ship was burning fast now – the entire aft deck was engulfed in flame. Without waiting to see what happened next, Astrid vaulted over the bow of the ship, onto the beach, and hurried clear.

A creaking, splintering sound rose behind her as she ran, and she turned to see the ship's mainmast topple slowly forward, nearly scything the ship in half lengthwise as it plunged with huge force into the wooden deck. Razor-sharp shards of pine flew in all directions.

If Astrid had been but a moment later, the poor dragon that she now held in her arms would now be dead, and in all likelihood, so would she.

She paused and thought. She'd just saved a creature she was supposed not to care about, even slightly.

_But seeing a dragon save the life of someone who has just saved_your _life clearly does strange things to a person_, thought Astrid.

She walked slowly back towards the Vikings, now cradling the Terror in her arms. It had stopped its struggling and now lay curled protectively around itself and trembling, clearly petrified.

Astrid sighed.

_Dragons are emotionless?_

She wondered, incredulously, how she had ever been led to believe that.

The other teens were staring at her, or rather, the dragon she was carrying towards them. She didn't think anyone had seen her little stunt – the adults all seemed preoccupied with Hiccup, and how to get him out of the Night Fury's protective grasp – but nonetheless, bringing yet another dragon into their midst was bound to attract some attention.

"Astrid, what -"

"Does anyone have a knife?" she interjected.

"Oh, do you want to kill it?"

Snotlout looked conflicted, much like she felt. His upbringing was telling him the tiny dragon should die immediately – but at that particular point, every single one of them had practically irreconcilable issues with everything their upbringing had taught them, and they were at a loss as to how to act.

"No, I want to set it free".

Snotlout's face lit up with relief – how the boy had changed in only a few hours – and he reached down to his belt, pulling out a small knife and handing it to Astrid.

"What about the shackles on its feet? A knife won't deal with them." Fishlegs asked.

Astrid pondered. Ideally, she wanted to set it free here – she didn't want to have to confine it for a moment longer. However, none of them seemed to have anything on them that could deal with the robust metal chain that held the dragon's legs together.

It was still curled up into a ball, shaking, and whimpering every so often.

So many emotions previously unknown to Astrid were bombarding her today, and the latest was pity for the poor thing.

"Would an axe work?" Tuffnut replied, snapping Astrid back to the present.

"Too crude. We'd risk taking one of its legs off" said Ruffnut.

Astrid winced at this. It was all too easy to remember the state Hiccup found himself in mere yards away from where they were now, and her pained facial expression though it only lasted a moment was not lost on Ruffnut.

"What?" she asked.

Astrid wasn't sure whether any of them knew what was going on with Hiccup. She didn't know if they'd seen his leg.

"Hiccup…Hiccup's leg is going to have to be…c-cut off…" Astrid barely managed to choke out, as tears again filled her eyes.

Ruffnut's eyes went wide, as did everyone else's.

"Gods…"

Everyone seemed as shocked as she'd been when she found out. Clearly, they hadn't known.

A long period of silence followed, before the Terror whimpered again, reminding them of what they had been doing.

"Come on," said Astrid, wiping the tears from her face, "let's cut this twine on its wings. Take our minds off it".

"But what if it flies away straight after we do that? Its feet will still be shackled together!"

"Yeah, and it'll still be muzzled! It won't be able to feed".

"Well, what order would _you _like to do it in then?" Astrid snapped irritably.

"_I _don't know!" Ruffnut shot back. "_You _rescued it – Hel, you were the one that trussed it up like this to start with!"

Astrid sighed and massaged her temples with her remaining free hand. This was going to be more difficult than she'd thought.

* * *

"Gobber, can I borrow your hammer?"

Preoccupied, the blacksmith was surprised by the question. He did, indeed, always carry a small smithing hammer with him, out of old habit, but quite what use anyone could possibly have had for it at_ that_ particular moment escaped him. He turned his head to see Astrid standing behind him.

"Wha'ever for, lass?"

"You know that Terrible Terror we used to get here?"

Gobber's eyes widened and he looked back over Astrid's shoulder towards the smouldering remains of the Viking fleet.

_We sure as Hel forgot about that poor beast…_

Seeing his sudden concern, Astrid added hurriedly, "It's okay, I got it out of the ship a while ago. But its legs are still shackled together, and we can't think of any other way to break the chain".

Gazing questioningly at Astrid, Gobber slowly reached down and pulled the hammer out of his belt, handing it to Astrid. He wondered what on earth was going on in the world. Astrid was not exactly well known for showing compassion.

Then again, a lot of things were changing.

"Thanks" she said, before hurrying away.

Gobber shook his head. It had been a strange kind of day.

* * *

"Hold the chain onto that rock".

Astrid held the hammer above her head, as Fishlegs drew the dragon's two front legs apart as far as the chain would allow, then held them such that the middle of the chain rested on a small rock that sat on the beach.

Astrid gritted her teeth, took aim and swung.

An almighty clang echoed around the beach and the dragon squealed, bucking against Fishlegs' hold on it, trying again to escape.

Astrid felt awful for it, but she swung the hammer again, and was rewarded with one of the metal links snapping open, and the chain falling loose.

They repeated this for the three remaining chains, until eventually the dragon's legs were free. It took redoubled effort to stop the dragon running away now, as it scrabbled at every surface its legs came even remotely near to, attempting to gain some purchase.

Quickly, Astrid took her knife and cut the thin cord that she herself had wrapped around the Terror's wings. It appalled her to see how callous she had been – a deep cut was visible on the main spar of the dragon's left wing where the cord had cut into it, as the dragon had thrashed around in panic.

Fishlegs placed his hands squarely on the dragon's back as Snotlout held on to its tail, just as he had done on the ship under very different circumstances, and together they held it down as Astrid undid the buckles on the back on the muzzle.

She prised it off slowly, standing deliberately behind the dragon's head, wary and unsure of how it would react. She frankly wouldn't have blamed it for wanting to attack every single one of them the moment it was able to.

Yet it didn't. Instead, the moment its head was released, the dragon's head snapped round to the left. Its gaze fixed on where Hiccup and the Night Fury were, and remained there.

Fishlegs stood up at the same moment Snotlout let go of its tail, and the Terrible Terror immediately pelted off towards the large group of Vikings gathered around the boy and the larger dragon.

Halfway there though, it did something utterly unexpected.

It stopped and looked back towards them, cocking its head.

Astrid gazed back, confused. This was a wild dragon, and it should have been fleeing as fast as possible. Instead…

The dragon glanced back to the Night Fury, before again fixing Astrid with its stare.

Astrid hesitantly walked forward. Did the tiny creature really want her to follow it?

Apparently it did. It resumed walking towards where the boy lay, regularly checking over its shoulder to see if Astrid was still there.

Suddenly, Astrid understood. It hadn't been struggling in order to try to get away from the humans. Somehow, it had known that it could help Hiccup, and had been desperate to.

Astrid ran to catch up just as the tiny dragon pushed through the crowd and chirruped at the much larger Night Fury. The juxtaposition of the diminutive creature seeming almost to challenge the black dragon in its behaviour would have been amusing, were it not for the circumstances in which it occurred. The Terrible Terror glanced back at Astrid, and then back to the Night Fury, resuming its chirruping noises.

Was it telling the larger dragon that Astrid was no threat to it?

Astrid hoped so, as she stepped forward also, and the black dragon, still holding Hiccup close to itself, fixed her with a steady gaze.

Gradually, not entirely sure what she was doing, Astrid advanced towards it. Its gaze never wavered, but neither did it growl or try to threaten or frighten her.

The word that came to Astrid's mind, above all others, was 'noble'. That was what the dragon looked like. Not evil, violent or repulsive. Noble. Steadfast. Yet worried.

She stopped inches away from the Night Fury, and reached down slowly, seeing if she could prise its front paws apart and retrieve the boy from its embrace.

The dragon shrank away from Astrid's hands and tightened its grip on Hiccup ever so slightly. Still it did not growl or snarl, but nonetheless it clearly did not yet trust her enough to let her near its rider.

"Please, you _have_ to let me have him…"

Astrid pleaded with the dragon. It clearly understood there was something wrong with Hiccup, but it didn't know what to do about it. It seemed to think that if it kept the boy away from the Vikings, it was protecting him from further harm.

This, Astrid thought, was not an unreasonable attitude to take, given the hurt that they had already caused him. However, if the dragon did not let the Vikings tend to Hiccup, he would likely die.

"Please…" Astrid whispered now.

A single tear rolled slowly down her cheek and she closed her eyes in sadness.

There and then she almost gave up hope.

But as she felt the last vestiges of her sorely-tested strength begin to leave her, something nudged her gently on the forehead. Something warm.

She opened her eyes, and saw the dragon's head, lowered, gently touching the top of her own. Its eyes were shut.

Astrid's mind was doing backflips even as she held her head perfectly still and let the dragon comfort her.

This was _impossible._

But even as she thought that, she saw the dragon's gaze relax, its brow softening, and its wings unfurled just a fraction, allowing her to reach out and gently take Hiccup from the dragon's grasp. The boy looked so peaceful. For a moment, Astrid feared he'd died in the time that had passed, but she saw his chest rising and falling, albeit shallowly, and she smiled ever so slightly.

The dragon's attention was now only on Hiccup. As she stood slowly, cradling the boy, and carried him back over to the Vikings, it followed her as close as did her own shadow; its eyes never left the boy. It sat and watched him as they laid him down on the shingle and applied a tourniquet to his upper leg.

It held its forehead against his, trembling softly, as they cut the shredded remains of his lower leg away. The dragon keened softly, its eyes closed and its expression sorrowful.

It looked so human, as its gaze held firm in the half-light.

* * *

The light flickered, casting long shadows into the tiny pool of weak light it threw out into the impenetrable surrounding darkness.

Astrid was reminded of their dragon-training debriefs with Gobber. Then too, they had gathered round a fire, out in the open, and talked.

Hiccup had been with them then, though – albeit briefly. And they hadn't been in quite as sombre a mood as they were now.

The prior hours had passed in a blur of fever-pitch work to get one of the ships ready to sail. Darkness had fallen and they'd worked on by the light of the ships that were burning.

One ship was all that was needed. The rest could follow on later. But Hiccup needed to get back to Berk. The entire tribe agreed.

Whether it was for him to heal, or for him to die back home, Astrid did not want to ask.

A faint clattering echoed between the rocks as the work went on into the night. Having initially been told to help, the teenagers now sat and just waited. They'd be on the same boat as Hiccup, and if all went well, it was leaving the next morning.

Stoick had decided they needed their rest, but none of them could even contemplate sleep, given all that had happened. So instead they talked.

The boy himself was with his dragon and two of the shieldmaidens, on the far side of the beach. They were tending to him and watching him – nervously, for his leg had been fully amputated just below the knee and there was every possibility of infection, fever or death from sheer exhaustion. Not a single moment went by without one of the teenagers thinking of him and wishing it had all been different.

"What I can't work out" began Snotlout, breaking the momentary silence, "is how he even met that dragon in the first place. How did he even get close enough to it without it killing him?"

The entire group stared hard at him.

"Come on, that's the way dragons behave! You all know that!" the black-haired boy looked imploringly round each face in turn, searching for agreement.

"I _used _to think that" muttered Ruffnut, barely audible, "but you saw, as well as I did, just what happened up there. Going by what we've been taught all our lives – well for one thing, Hiccup shouldn't have even been able to get within a hundred yards of the thing, let alone _ride_ it. Plus, you saw what it did – it saved his life, and actually all of ours as well, for Thor's sake!" The girl went silent for a moment, but then continued, quietly, "I just don't know what to think any more. It's still lying over there, protecting _him_ from _us"._

"I don't blame it, the way we treated him" interjected Tuffnut.

"And just what is that supposed to mean?" challenged Snotlout, heatedly.

"Oh just think about it - dragons aren't stupid. It'll know we were hardly friendly to Hiccup over the years, and from the way that dragon's trying to keep us away from Hiccup, I think it's safe to say we did quite a lot more damage than we ever thought we might be. From the dragon's perspective, it's keeping him out of harms way by not letting us see him. And the worst thing? It's absolutely justified".

Silence fell swiftly as the truth of this sank in, and every one of them glanced back to where they could just make out the long, sleek silhouette of the dragon lying right alongside the boy, the Night Fury's head lying protectively on Hiccup's chest as it slowly, almost imperceptibly rose and fell to show them he was still alive in there somewhere.

It is bewildering to have one's entire culture proven to be a fallacy, and this is exactly what had happened. Throughout the day, beneath the businesslike and busy exterior mannerisms of the Vikings, Astrid had caught glimpses of uncertainty and nervousness. The dragon was clearly not trusted, but at the same time nobody could quite believe what it had done for Hiccup, and just how close the two of them seemed. The creature was left well alone.

Tuffnut yawned awkwardly and stretched his arms upwards. "When's the ship supposed to be leaving, anyway?"

"As soon as they can get it fixed" replied Fishlegs. "I asked, and they said that most of the damage was to the upper hull and the mast, which is hardly a quick thing to fix, but the last time I looked, they were nearly there. I'd hazard a guess at dawn – or even a bit earlier".

"We're gonna be on the same boat as a bloody fire-breathing Night Fury" said Snotlout, his tone of voice a curious mixture of fatalism and wonderment.

It had gone without saying that the dragon was going with the boy – this was not anything the Vikings had decided, but it was evidently impossible to get the dragon to leave Hiccup's side. Room had to be made. Quite what they were going to do with the thing once they got back to Berk was anybody's guess – Astrid suspected it would depend entirely on what the dragon itself wanted to do. Nobody wanted to be the one to have to order a Night Fury around.

Astrid sighed and gazed into the campfire. Images flitted in and out of her mind – of the dragon, with Hiccup on its back, skyrocketing into the clouds, of the brilliant blue bolts of fire from the sky that had heralded the arrival of the boy – and finally, with a startling, unsettling clarity, as if it were going on right then in front of her, she saw the tiny, barely distinguishable outline of Hiccup falling backwards, arms outstretched, into the inferno, and the Fury diving after him.

Her grief must have shown in her eyes, because she was snapped back to reality by a question from Ruffnut.

"Astrid, what on earth's got into you?"

"What did we do?" Astrid muttered to herself, as if she hadn't heard the question. "Why did we drive him to that?"

She saw the looks of confusion the group was suddenly sending her.

"All we ever did was make him feel like an outcast. Then, when he actually became an outcast – which was my fault as well – we forgot him within _days!_ And despite _all that_" – Astrid was shouting now – "he came back for us. Do you remember what we called him? A runt. A failure. And why? Because we thought it was _funny?_"

Now she could see the guilt on her faces.

"I don't know what the rest of you intend to do, but when he wakes up I intend to tell him, and show him, just how sorry I am – because I really am, and I don't care if some piece of stupid Viking tradition says I shouldn't be." She glared at every one of the teenagers around her individually, seeming almost to force the guilt even further home, though they all already felt it acutely enough.

Astrid did not often feel guilt in her life, and had never grieved for anything. It had been taught to her time and again that one did not, as a Viking, show weakness in that manner. For a long time – _too long_ – she'd gone along with it, accepting it as unshakeable truth.

It is a strange thing indeed to have the hitherto unshakeable shaken to the point where it completely collapses. Astrid suddenly saw right through the lies she'd been fed, intentionally or not. She could feel a sea change coming in their society, and one for the better, she hoped. She didn't want to ever have to repress her emotions again. She didn't want to ever again be forced into being something other than herself.

It was now that she was able to admit that her love of, and propensity for, fighting - and her famously short temper - had been her subconscious frustrations bubbling under. She hated the machismo and bravado that went with being a Viking. It felt too much like simply going through the motions. Not something that someone as fiercely independent as Astrid was very happy with.

Astrid was a fierce and untamed soul, but she craved honesty in their lives. She wanted people to be honest to themselves and each other. If, she reflected, Hiccup's actions eventually brought that about, that would be the true heroism, and the true sacrifice.

She found herself praying with all her heart that he might - just might - live to see it happen.

She didn't quite know why.

* * *

**There we go...again, hope you enjoyed, please review and tell me your views on EVERYTHING (!) - including of course, our sideshow heroic little Terrible Terror which you first met being treated suitably horribly by big-bad-nasty-evil-Astrid in chapter 5 =P**

**If you think I've got the emotions, characters or personalities wrong somehow, please feel free to keep it to yourself! XD Just kidding, please tell me exactly what you think is off, or wrong or unfeasible, and try to explain why! I love constructive criticism!**


	8. In His Time of Need

**Right, here's chapter 8. Have been having a wee bit of writer's block and I'm slightly worried it's a bit rushed, but overall I like the way it came out. Please read and review!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 8**

**In His Time of Need**

The lapping of the waves on the hull began to reach her ears, just as the mists whirled suddenly away into nothingness around them and the azure sea and sky presented themselves, in all their majesty and grace.

Aboard the gently rolling ship, Astrid watched as they left the island of the dragons behind, sailing out into open and clear waters. The weight still would not lift from her heart, rather it hung heavy against her chest like some pendant of shame and remorse that she was bound to wear, and for the hundredth time since they'd set sail earlier that day, she fixed her eyes back on the Night Fury. It was still cradling Hiccup in its paws, its own gaze fixated on the boy, and it sat utterly unmoving, its focus resting in one place and one place only. It would not let anyone near the boy, snarling if anyone encroached on its space, even as its eyes stayed resolutely monitoring its wounded rider.

Hiccup was out of immediate danger, but still in a bad way, feverish and perpetually bathed in a cold and clinging sweat that was evident even at a distance. Once the remainder of his leg had been removed and the wound cauterized by Gobber and a couple of the more strong-stomached Vikings, the dragon had immediately taken the boy back from them and sat with him, and had not left him since.

It had taken them half an hour to persuade the dragon to get onto the ship, and another full hour to try to remove the ruined, charred and soot-blackened remnants of what appeared to be a harness and saddle from the Night Fury. It seemed reluctant to let them take the ruined leather and metalwork off of it, as if the harness represented a connection between the dragon and Hiccup, which it did not want to lose. Perhaps it was exactly that.

It had been then she'd noticed the dragon was missing its left tailfin, and suddenly a great many things slotted home in her brain. The dragon was flightless without Hiccup, and he had constructed this harness to rectify that.

It certainly explained his almost total absence from the village in the weeks immediately prior to his outright disappearance. She'd never thought to look in the forge. She cursed herself for forgetting the old warrior's trick of hiding in plain sight – evidently, Hiccup was far cannier than she'd given him credit for.

A great many Vikings still remained behind on the beach – those whose need to return home was less pressing. Of the thirty-odd ships that had sailed to the island, the one they were on was the only one still seaworthy, and even at a stretch it was barely capable of accommodating one twentieth of the men who had journeyed there. More ships would need to be sent from Berk, but that was a matter for Stoick, the chieftain.

Presently, though, Astrid reflected that the great Viking didn't look up to ordering anyone around.

He sat at the bow of the ship, almost as immobile and mute as Hiccup and the Night Fury sat at the stern. Stoick had not glanced back along the length of the ship even once during the whole time they'd been at sea so far, and Astrid wondered at his emotions. It was not customary for a Viking chief to feel guilt, or even any amount of uncertainty - but then again, it was far from orthodox for the chief's son to ride a Night Fury into what had practically amounted to a suicide mission, against a dragon the size of a small glacier.

Her thoughts kept going back to the changes that had been thrust upon them by circumstance – and all within the space of a day. More was sure to follow when they got back, but for now, all she wanted to do was get home and gather her thoughts. She suspected they all felt the same, and she did not envy thouse waiting behind.

Besides herself, Stoick, Hiccup and the Night Fury, aboard also was the rest of the ex-dragon training students – the teenagers, her contemporaries. It had been considered that they were perhaps not ready to deal with the full blown aftermath of a battle, far from home and away from their chieftain. Astrid, despite her legendary, fiery independence and her stubbornness, had seen sense and acquiesced.

Of course, it had nothing whatsoever to do with concern for the boy. None at all. She merely wanted to get home.

That, at least, was what Astrid told herself, time and again, even as she felt her heart begin to disagree with her, growing more and more vociferous and insistent as time went by and the day slowly dawned.

Also present was Gobber, mainly because he was the one who had dealt with Hiccup's wound and he was the closest thing they had to a medic, as well as five other mildly-injured warriors and a modest complement of competent sailors. It was hardly a packed ship, but priorities were priorities, and they'd needed to leave with the tide to make sure of getting out of the rocks without grounding out. They'd been in somewhat of a hurry.

The voyage had mostly been quiet and sombre indeed, but there had been moments of interruption, when Hiccup, feverish as he was, woke up screaming.

This had happened twice, and Astrid had both times been amazed at the way the dragon reacted. It had pressed the base of its head down onto Hiccup's chest, stopping him from thrashing and bucking around as he screamed incoherent gibberish, his eyes full to overflowing with simple, wrenching agony. Both times the Night Fury had remained that way, unmoving, unfaltering, until Hiccup had subsided back into the relative relief of unconsciousness.

The dragon's eyes reflected something utterly awe-inspiring and yet so terribly heart-wrenching. Though it still would not even glance at them, Astrid had seen the mournful look it had adopted as it seemed almost to force itself to restrain the boy. It seemed as if it hurt the dragon to see Hiccup this way – very much in the same manner as it cut Astrid to the quick to hear the pain in his voice, and to be unable to do anything to help.

Mercy of mercies, Hiccup wasn't bleeding – they would have lost him had he been – but his fever was evidently dangerously high – it could be seen even from halfway down the deck that he was in a bad way.

Astrid prayed to all the gods she could remember, and a few that she would later realize she had made up on the spot, for the winds to be favourable and strong, and to carry them home with all the speed the hull could sustain.

For now, Hiccup was out cold, though the permanent, deep furrows in his brow and the twitching of his facial muscles testified to the pain he was feeling even whilst unconscious. Astrid found it very hard to concentrate on anything but him, but she dragged herself up and went to check on the Terrible Terror that had somehow found its way onboard – quite why it still wished to be around them, she could not fathom, but they had found it sitting innocently, for all the world as if it had every right and reason to be there, right in the middle of the deck, just as they had cast off and left. It had spotted Astrid amongst the crew and had not stopped following her from then until, out of exasperation, she had offered it one of the salted fish they had stocked as provisions, and it had trotted off to a corner, in a manner Astrid could only describe as ever so slightly smug.

This was a _dragon_. It couldn't be _smug_.

Although, it had chirruped at her and nuzzled its own stomach with its snout after having consumed the fish in all of two bites, before glancing pointedly back at her.

Still, perhaps she had deserved it. Her bloodlust prior to the battle had led her to cruelty that, looking back even now, perhaps only eighteen hours, seemed so abhorrent that she was aghast at the idea it could ever have been her doing it.

Astrid was certainly surprised to learn that dragons don't hold grudges. Not even the infamously irritable Terrible Terrors – this one seemed perfectly amicable and right at home.

Astrid shook her head in wonderment. She could only presume the thing had a very short memory.

* * *

"Chief! Sir!"

The lookout's urgent cry broke Astrid from her contemplative stupor as Stoick made his way hurriedly to the mainmast. He still would not look at the black dragon that lay at the stern, and instead fixed his gaze upwards, where the lookout perched on a small platform.

"What is it?"

"There's a flight of dragons headed our way!"

Instantly Astrid was up, axe in hand and scanning the sky.

"How close?" she heard Stoick reply, tersely.

"Middle distance sir, but they're closing fast."

This was the last thing they needed – a dragon attack whilst ferrying the wounded. If the ship went down now, on its own and with no fleet around it to pick up survivors, they were all dead. It was as simple as that.

Nobody was going to chance that willingly. She could see people tensing and reaching for the piles of throwing axes. She was on edge – they all were. Uncertain now of what they had held to be true for so long – that dragons were a threat – they chose to react by reverting to default.

"Sir, they're passing down our starboard!" shouted the lookout, before he ducked below the lip of his lofty parapet in self defence.

Astrid ran over to the gunwale, and hissed in alarm as two Nightmares and an electric blue Deadly Nadder whistled past the ship mere metres away.

Yet even as her muscles tensed and her body made its subconscious preparations for combat, her mind was elsewhere, wandering and wondering. Dragons didn't make circling passes if they intended to attack something. They just attacked.

Then, something happened that settled the issue in her mind for good.

She heard a soft whine behind her, and turned, startled, to see the Night Fury's eyes, wide and fearful, fixated on the axe she gripped tightly in her hand. Its expression seemed crystal clear to her. There was no anger or threat there. It seemed to be saying only one thing.

_Please, don't do this._

Astrid's own eyes widened in shock and she let the axe fall to the deck, at the same time letting out a cry of her own.

"Stop!"

Instantly, all eyes were on her and only her. Behind the ship, the three dragons arced round to come back towards them. She had possibly a couple of moments before the violence started.

"Why, if they wanted to attack, would they pass by us instead of just attacking straight away? I don't think they mean us harm" Astrid went on. "Put down your weapons and let's just see what happens, instead of blindly attacking like we always do".

Slowly, with misgivings evident in their expressions, the Viking warriors on the ship lowered their axes to the deck and stood tensely, ready to pick them up again at merely the slightest provocation. Astrid glanced back to the three dragons, and was startled to see just how close they were.

As they watched, the formation drew closer to the ship, this time heading straight at them, although not at a particularly blistering pace. Astrid tried to tell herself this was evidence they weren't attacking, and moments later she seemed vindicated in her conviction, as the two bright orange Monstrous Nightmares suddenly peeled away in opposite directions, whilst only the Nadder continued on its path towards them. It seemed languid in the air, relaxed. As if it was trying to appear unthreatening. It was still a dragon though, and it was _exceptionally _close to the boat. In past times, if a dragon of any sort had ever got this close to any ship, everyone onboard would have been as good as dead. With effort, Astrid held her nerve, clenching and unclenching her fists in her anxiety as the blue dragon bore down on them.

Suddenly, as it was only feet away and Astrid was on the point of letting instinct take over, and was about to grab a throwing axe again, the Nadder seemed to backpedal in the air, its wings abruptly beating in the opposite direction to that in which it flew, slowing almost to a stop in the air before dropping lightly, to stand on the deck. It turned its head to the side to look at Astrid, one of its eyes fixing her with an unnervingly profound stare.

All was silence on deck as the shock of the event sunk in. Even the Terrible Terror had stopped its mindless twittering.

For what felt like whole aeons, nothing moved save the sails in the wind. The Nadder stood amidships, and the Vikings clustered at the bow. For the moment, Hiccup and his Night Fury were forgotten – Nadders were quick and unpredictable, and one had just landed on deck. All attention was firmly on it.

This one wasn't doing anything though, merely looking at her.

Not the Vikings in general. _Her._ Astrid specifically.

_What's it doing?_

It was almost behaving as the Night Fury had on the beach the day before, when it had first appeared carrying the unconscious Hiccup on its back. That dragon had looked then as if it had needed, of all things, human contact – and so it had proved to be, as Astrid remembered all too well.

_Surely not?_

Astrid was utterly bewildered – as could perhaps have been expected. Nonetheless, her mind wandered back to Hiccup, and the devotion his dragon seemed to show him. She wondered how that bond had been forged. She had no idea of exactly what had transpired between the two of them – she didn't know of their flights together, or just how deep the bond between them now ran - but as the Nadder stood opposite her, she wondered if it might, just might, all begin with one single touch, one gesture of trust.

She stepped forward. The Nadder didn't move, and neither did anyone else.

Slowly, she extended her hand towards the dragon. Little did she know just how uncanny a resemblance the scene bore to the one that had occurred, between a boy and Night Fury, in the cove off Raven Point a little over two months ago.

For a moment, the blue Nadder still stared unblinkingly at her, and her outstretched hand. Then, almost imperceptibly, it shifted towards her, and craned its neck ever so slightly in her direction, accepting the gesture.

Perhaps it knew what had happened the previous day on the dragon's island. Perhaps it understood the sacrifice Hiccup had made. Perhaps it was doing its best to explain everything to the humans whilst the boy himself could not. Astrid had no idea why it was doing what it was doing, or how it knew these humans had been involved, and were safe to approach - all she knew was that it had done.

Either way, it was plain it was no threat to them – and neither were the two Nightmares still circling overhead. It was obvious now that their entire culture was going to need some serious adjustment – dragons simply weren't evil, that much had now become plain. But if they weren't that...what were they?

So much to discover, and she couldn't ask the one person who might know. Hiccup.

Astrid took one deep breath, steeled herself, reached her hand out the rest of the way, and gently placed it on the side of the Nadder's head, just in front of the eye, which promptly shut as the dragon softly hummed its acceptance of the gesture.

The ship's complement was thunderstruck, yet again, as they watched what they could only presume to be a sequence of events similar to that in which Hiccup had befriended his Night Fury. Astrid herself began to feel the first whispers of understanding and acceptance sprouting in her mind, as she locked gazes with the dragon, and watched as it stared straight back at her.

* * *

"So, are you gonna name it?"

It was half a day later, and Fishlegs' sudden and overeager question jolted Astrid from a fog of deep thought that she'd been in for the whole time since.

"Huh?"

"It's just, I've been sorta wondering if that Night Fury has a name, and then I started wondering if you'd given that Nadder a name…"

The Nadder in question was now curled up sleeping amidships, and despite what they'd witnessed, a large number of the crew, as well as Stoick, still looked profoundly unnerved by it. It was, after all, a creature they were more used to seeing on the delivering end of a fireball, likely aimed at them. Seeing it so peaceful and nonthreatening was incongruous, to say the least. And on one of their ships as well.

"No, I haven't named it, 'Legs" Astrid said tiredly. "For one thing, I don't know whether it's a boy or a girl…_dragon_."

"It's a female" Fishlegs responded immediately.

"How'd you know that?" A hundred and one suspicions, not all of them decent, leapt unbidden to the forefront of Astrid's mind.

"It has a crest on its neck. Only female Nadders have that."

Astrid sighed in mock exasperation, and some relief, as the disturbing images her imagination had conjured immediately dissipated. Fishlegs always had been the one of their group who knew all the unnecessary trivia none of them had ever thought they'd ever have any use for.

_Although,_ thought Astrid, _in fairness, that actually is quite useful to know. Now, at least._

"Fine, it's a female. I'm still not quite comfortable giving it a name yet."

"Why?"

"Look, I don't know the first thing about them! Hiccup's clearly got this all worked out – you only need to look at the way that Fury is protecting him from us, to see that." Astrid felt a lump begin to form in her throat at the thought that, on past form at any rate, Hiccup really did _need_ protecting from all of them, the way they'd behaved. She suppressed it quickly. "But he's out cold and I can't ask him! For all I know, naming a dragon irritates the Hel out of them and makes them kill everything in sight!"

"Hiccup's going to be fine, Astrid" said Fishlegs, instantaneously seeing through the feeble disguise she'd thrown up over the rising tide of emotion in her chest, and her attempts to divert the conversation elsewhere.

"How can you be sure, though? For Thor's sake, he's just lost a leg! And-" Astrid felt her cast-iron grip on her emotions begin to slacken involuntarily – "It's my fault! I drove him away, and then for some reason he felt like he had to come after us! How did he even know we were in trouble?"

The floodgates burst open, and despite everything – despite her reputation – Astrid felt the first tears begin to slide silently down her cheeks. She bowed her head in her sadness, and her voice was quiet now. Broken.

"Despite everything we did to him, despite everything we said, he came back, when he had every right and reason to stay away and let us all die."

Fishlegs' jaw flapped uselessly as he stared uncomprehendingly at the sight before him. Astrid Hofferson was _crying_.

"I… I didn't know you cared about him that much" he finally managed to choke out, after several long moments of silence.

"I didn't! A few weeks ago I couldn't have cared less for him!" she practically yelled at Fishlegs, although in reality she was just venting and was only angry at herself. She quietened rapidly. "But now…"

She paused. What did she feel? She wasn't really sure of much. She knew she didn't want the boy to die, but couldn't quite work out exactly why. The part of her that still wanted to keep up appearances insisted vehemently that it was because, if he died, she'd have to find someone else to outclass in dragon training – if dragon training was even going to continue now. But the majority of her was throwing a whole host of other, more profound and emotive possibilities around inside her head – possibilities that, Astrid felt deep down, were much closer to the truth. She didn't want him to die because she knew she'd misjudged him - his courage and his character. She didn't want him to die because she was maddeningly fascinated with what exactly he and the Night Fury had done together to become so close. She didn't want him to die because she wanted to apologise for all the years before, and make it up to him somehow. She didn't want him to die because, out of all of them, she felt he deserved it least.

She just… didn't want him to die. For the moment, she was fine not knowing why - the possibilities were complex and frightening. She yearned with all her might for him to pull through. The thought that he might not, sent stabs of guilt spearing straight through her heart – a heart that, until very recently, she had arrogantly thought to be hardened beyond the point of feeling any remorse, sorrow or guilt at all. For anything. She'd been deluding herself, she knew now.

She felt Fishlegs sit down heavily next to her.

"Astrid… if it's any consolation, we all feel the same."

"Really?"

"Yes. I can't quite believe what Hiccup did either. Snotlout's basically switched his brain off instead of trying to think about all the ramifications this is going to have."

Astrid gave a small chuckle. "He always was the stupid one, wasn't he?"

They kept on sailing. They were only halfway there.

* * *

It seemed that the whole world had stood still and held its breath, as the ship had docked back in Berk.

It was the deadest of night and the wind was calm. There was not a sound from anywhere around them, save for the waves lapping softly against the piers.

Stoick had gone off to gather the villagers who had remained behind together and explain why it was what they were bringing a Night Fury, a gravely-injured Hiccup, and a Deadly Nadder back with them. For the moment, the rest of them stood silently on the quayside. The Night Fury was still on the ship for the moment, as was Hiccup - quite how they were going to get the boy back into his house was anybody's guess. It looked certain that the ink-black dragon would be joining him - nobody would dare try to forcibly separate the two.

Astrid could feel the nerves coiling in the pit of her stomach as she leant against her newly-befriended dragon for support. Every muscle, every bone in her body ached from exhaustion - it had been a long two days. It seemed surreal in the extreme to think that it had only been fourty-eight hours ago that they had set sail, intent on finally destroying the dragon menace. How they'd been brimming with confidence - or arrogance, as she now knew it to be.

The silence was overpowering. Nobody knew what to say, and it was only when the clatter of footsteps on the wooden walkways that clung to the steep cliffs above testified to the arrival of the remainder of the village that anybody spoke up. Predictably, it was Gobber.

"Righ', Astrid, make sure that dragon doesn't move. This is going to be enough of a shock to them even if Stoick's already explained it, and the last thing we need is a startled Nadder running amok."

"What about the Night Fury? That's a _far_ more dangerous dragon!" Astrid responded indignantly.

"He won't leave Hiccup's side. Yeh know that as well as I"

Astrid paused. Gobber had just said something very unusual.

"You just said 'he', Gobber" she enquired of the village blacksmith.

"Yeh, I did."

Astrid paused a moment.

"Why?"

"Because look at it!" he said, gesturing to the Night Fury. "It's protecting Hiccup like a brother or a son. Clearly it's - _he's_ - far more intelligent than we ever gave them credit for. And he saved Hiccup's life. I think he deserves a little more respect than he's getting."

Astrid could only agree silently, as the first group of villagers rushed down the final ramp and came face to face with them. They were only illuminated by the faintest of flickering torchlight from a couple of beacons mounted high on the cliff. The scene was a surreal one.

More so for those who had not been expecting to find a Nadder standing quite calmly amongst the humans.

Astrid's mother, Hilda, was the first to speak, addressing her. "Gods, Astrid, what is this?"

Astrid said nothing. Instead, she merely pointed wearily to the ship.

Hilda squinted through the darkness for a moment, before her eyes fell upon the black form of the Night Fury. Her hand flew to her mouth in shock and she gasped.

"Is that..."

"Yes, it is"

Another pause.

"What in the name of all that's holy is that thing doing on there?" Hilda whispered disbelievingly.

Astrid frowned to herself - she'd thought Stoick had told them what had happened. Clearly not.

"Look again".

Hilda did so, just as the black dragon shifted its weight and for the first time, Hiccup came into view, cradled in the Fury's front paws. The boy's missing leg was all too evident from this angle.

"Oh, no..."

"He saved our lives, mum" Astrid stated flatly. "When we got there, we were confronted with a dragon as tall as that cliff." She gestured over her shoulder. "We would all be dead if Hiccup hadn't arrived, riding that dragon, and killed the thing. I have no idea how he knew or why he decided to do what he did, so don't ask me, but as the thing was in its death throes..." Astrid paused, gathering herself. She was not about to break down for the second time that day. "Hiccup somehow fell off his saddle, and would have died if that dragon-" she pointed again to the Night Fury - "hadn't dived after him and caught him. But, he lost his leg in the process."

There was no emotion in Astrid's voice - she was merely stating the facts. Yet, at the last of these sentences, a collective gasp came from the group of villagers.

"It's been protecting him ever since". She carried on regardless

"Protecting him from what?"

"Us."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because, actually, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, given how we treated him."

Hilda opened her mouth to respond, before the full magnitude of her daughter's words hit her, and again she put her hand over her mouth.

"Is he going to be alright?"

"Don't know."

Another gasp followed, before a muted cacophany of whispered comments started flying hither and thither, only interrupted by the arrival of Stoick, his heavy footsteps instantaneously silencing everyone.

"Right" he began, in a heavy-hearted voice. "How do we get my son off that ship?"

* * *

It had been an interesting endeavour, to say the least.

There had been much discussion, ranging from simply killing the dragon - which had been promptly shot down in flames by Astrid, Gobber, Stoick and practically everyone who'd been on board - to lifting the entire ship out of the water with a crane and carrying it to the chief's house. That one had earned more than a few raised eyebrows.

In the end, Astrid had simply lost patience and stepped back aboard. She'd persuaded the dragon to relinquish Hiccup once, perhaps she could do it again.

After much cajoling and persuasion, the dragon had given its implicit assent to carrying Hiccup off the ship itself, by standing up and pacing slowly down the ramp that led to the shore.

The entire group had backed up hurriedly, as they were confronted with the dragon described in all Viking children's stories as the one that could not be fought, and that was so dangerous that your best chance was simply to hide.

A lot of the Vikings had been trying desperately to hide then. The dragon had paid them no heed - instead glancing frequently over its shoulder to check Hiccup was still on its back.

It had taken a long time, but finally they found themselves in front of the chieftain's house. It was now only Gobber, Stoick and Astrid accompanying Hiccup and the Night Fury, as the rest of those present had gradually dispersed, to have their own reunions and to simply leave the chieftain some space. It was after all, his son that had been injured, and even despite Hiccup's prior reputation and Stoick's past proclamations of not caring one iota for the boy, the village's population guessed - correctly - that this was far too dramatic an event not to have affected the chief in some manner. They left him alone, although they had plenty of questions ready for the morning.

Wordlessly, Stoick pushed open the door and led the dragon inside, up the stairs and into Hiccup's room. Without even needing to be told, the dragon had slowly lowered its back so that Hiccup slid gently onto his bed, then nudged him with its nose so that he was lying straight. Then, it had sat up on its haunches, fixed its eyes on Hiccup, and had not moved a muscle since.

Astrid sat downstairs with the chief and the blacksmith. Not much was being said. Each had their own reflections to wallow in, their own problems to come to terms with.

Finally though, Stoick spoke, his voice heavy and exhausted.

"Astrid, I need to ask a favour of you."

"Yes, chief?"

"I have to go arrange ships to pick up the rest of the people who are still on the island, and I have to go do that now. You're the only one of us that dragon upstairs seems to trust." The chieftain paused. "I need you to stay with Hiccup tonight. Please, just watch him. I can't be with him and I doubt he'd want me to be anyway, but I won't let this village abandon him completely. Not again."

Astrid was stunned. The chief, trusting her with the care of his son?

"I wouldn't ask, Astrid, but although you probably didn't notice it, Hiccup seems to be less fretful and feverish when you're around."

This she most certainly hadn't noticed. She wondered when Stoick had. Nonetheless, she wanted Hiccup to pull through just as much as he did.

"Of course, sir."

And with that, she had wordlessly risen from her seat and padded up the stairs to where Hiccup lay.

She pushed open the door slightly, and edged into the room. The dragon did not respond at all, the whole of its attention remaining on the boy.

Astrid drew up a chair, sat down, and simply waited.

* * *

**Et Voila! Hope you enjoyed!**

**I am going on holiday for a few days tomorrow, and will begin writing chapter 9 as soon as I am back. I have a pretty good idea of where it's going to go, so it shouldn't take too long.**


	9. The Strains of Change

**Right, time for another update. This is a fairly shortish chapter which might be followed by another later today - a larger one. This one though deals with events in the couple of days after the arrival back at Berk. It's what you might call a little bit of an interval between one lot of heavy stuff another lot, upcoming.**

**Nonetheless, please read and review - and thanks so much to all those who have been reviewing, I'm sorry I haven't replied to any of them in a while, I will try to do so more!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 9**

**The Strains of Change**

There was a slanging match in progress in the Great Hall.

The morning had dawned quietly over Berk not half an hour ago, and already the hastily-assembled meeting had descended into farce. The main impasse, mused Astrid as she watched events detachedly, seemed to be the most obvious one – whether to allow dragons into the village, and befriend them as it seemed Hiccup had.

The exchanges were heated and sizzled with the tension of the situation. Opinion was divided pretty evenly along two lines of thought that couldn't have been more polar opposite to one another – some contended that this was merely a feint, a ploy by the dragons to bring about the demise of Berk, whilst others were arguing that they'd all been wrong about dragons from the start and that it was time to change their ways. There didn't seem to be any intermediary opinions, and emotions were running understandably high, even despite their currently-depleted numbers.

Astrid noted with a somewhat grim cynicism that, of those who held the former view, none of them had actually been on that voyage. None of them had seen just what she had seen. She was convinced.

The events of the night beforehand, meanwhile, had taken their toll on everyone, and none more so than Astrid. Hiccup had fretted constantly throughout, his breathing regularly becoming ragged and laboured, and he had not stopped sweating the whole time, even though he was still a deathly pale. Sitting there, she'd felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness even as the Night Fury had tried to calm the boy, gently but firmly holding him down on the bed as Hiccup had tossed and turned with the fever.

His frantic, feverish utterances had scared her the most, though. They spoke of hatred, spite, and grief that she'd never even though he could feel. In his hallucinating, far-from-lucid, semi-awake state, he'd spoken of the slights he'd received in dragon training, of the disapproval his father had for him – and as she'd sat and helplessly listened to the boy's subconscious lashing out in blind fury at the world around it, her guilt had deepened and coalesced.

One word had been repeated more than any other, however, and she couldn't make sense of it.

_Toothless_

In the course of the night, Hiccup had mumbled, muttered, whispered and screamed this word, over and over again, and it had been driving her to distraction trying to work out just what he'd meant. To the best of her knowledge, he still had all of his teeth left – perhaps it was a metaphor? Hiccup had always loved symbolism and the abstract – it was what had estranged him from many of the rest of them originally, Vikings being a practical and uncomplicated sort of people.

But why _toothless_? She had noticed the dragon had responded by flicking its ears and leaning closer to the boy every time he said it, but if anything, this confused her yet more. The dragon had a _lot _of teeth.

By dawn, she'd given up and shoved it to the back of her mind. There were more pressing matters to attend to. Stoick had spent the night running to and fro in the village, occupying himself with the return of the rest of the tribe from the dragon island and the organisation of a series of meetings to try to make sense of what had happened. The first of these meetings had happened that morning.

Already, it was in chaos. Food was now being thrown in anger, and Viking temperaments followed a very predictable path. Next, it would be weapons being thrown.

Stoick would normally have intervened by this point, but looking around, Astrid had spotted their chief sitting at a table in the corner with his shoulders slumped, not even trying to stop the impending carnage – and carnage it would be.

"You TRAITOR! You dragon-loving TRAITOR!" she heard someone shout furiously across the room. A moment later, she spotted an entire leg of mutton whizzing incongruously over the heads of several other men, before clocking the man who'd shouted the comment on the head with enough force to send him sprawling on the floor.

If the circumstances were not so grave, Astrid would have been amused. More than that, she probably would have been in the thick of the argument.

She sighed. Someone was going to have to do something eventually or there'd be nobody left for Hiccup to explain things to, when he eventually woke up.

_If_ he eventually woke up. The healer was with him now, at his house, and Astrid had sought the first excuse to make herself scarce. She feared bad news.

Wearily, she clambered onto the nearest table – which so happened to be the massive circular planning table from which the raid had been plotted in the first place – and with all the air in her lungs, bellowed to the room;

"FOR THOR AND ODINS' SAKES, BE _QUIET!"_

She hadn't expected any response whatsoever – she had just been venting, really – but suddenly she found herself confronted with a roomful of curious eyes staring straight at her.

Well, she _had_ been the one who stayed with Hiccup and the dragon all night.

_They must think I have something useful to say, _thought Astrid.

With a slight start, she realised she did.

"Perhaps those of you, who somehow think this is some elaborate ploy by the dragons to kill all of us, might do well to consider that that Night Fury could simply have wiped us out by leaving us alone on that beach. We really wouldn't have needed any help in destroying ourselves, our own stupidity was about to do that anyway."

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the chief's posture stiffen slightly, but she ploughed on regardless. She wasn't done.

"None of you – _none of you –_ saw what I saw last night. That dragon was caring for Hiccup better than I've ever seen any one of _us_ care for him – and we're supposed to be his tribe!"

A good majority of the crowd she now addressed looked down and began fidgeting at these words. Clearly, she wasn't the only one feeling guilty.

She was also becoming more and more angry.

"There's a boy lying unconscious at death's door in a house near here because he – and his _dragon_ – put themselves in the most awful danger, to save our lives! How hypocritical, exactly, do you have to be to say that the _dragons_ are callous, uncaring and bloodthirsty? Do you remember what we treated him like?"

Silence.

"_Do you?" _she demanded again. "Because I do! And if anything needs to change, it's _us_. If you want Hiccup to wake up to a tribe he might actually be interested in staying a part of, I suggest you change your mind. We've already made that mistake once, and he left." Astrid paused for a moment. Then, in a low, even voice, she added, "I seem to remember none of us cared that much, did we?"

With that, she jumped off the table and walked purposefully towards the door, beginning to quiver in fury even before she reached the massive slab of oak. A low mumbling rose behind her, though she heard it for only a moment before she slammed the door and strode off to find her Nadder.

* * *

The Night Fury was still there.

For hours and hours, it had sat and just watched – its massive, shimmering green eyes, laden with the emotion and hurt of the preceding days, fixed on Hiccup. Its entire posture was one of concern. It leant just slightly over him, watching his every breath, its ears cocked and alert.

Astrid had been in and out of Hiccup's house all day, looking after him, and the dragon had not moved in all that time. Despite herself and despite her history, Astrid found herself becoming worried for it. Surely it was hungry by now?

If it was, it showed no visible signs. But Astrid had no idea how long it had been since the dragon's last meal – only that it was longer than the two days she'd known it for.

More to the point, Astrid had no idea what dragons ate. In raids, they normally took sheep, but whether this was just because it was easy and accessible or whether it was their natural sustenance, nobody knew. It had not been a pressing concern for anyone besides Fishlegs – and Hiccup, in his own, as yet unknown way – to learn about dragons and their habits. Normally, killing it took top priority. The only thing you _needed_ to know was where the blind spot was and what sort of fire it shot, and the rest was of academic interest. Vikings do not, on the whole, make great academics, and it is difficult to find academic interest in something that is, for whatever reason, trying to kill you.

Astrid had been blindsided by the sudden interactions she was having with any number of dragon species, and she realized then that she was nowhere near capable of looking after an introverted Night Fury.

Nonetheless, it needed to eat. If its duty was to watch over Hiccup – and it seemed to be – then Astrid decided her duty was to make that possible.

She went to find Fishlegs.

* * *

"Fish, mostly."

The substantial blond Viking leant nonchalantly against the doorframe of his house as he responded to Astrid's query. She'd just asked him what dragons liked to eat, and she could safely say she was surprised by the answer.

"Really?"

She couldn't help the note of incredulity that crept into her voice.

"Yup – although, whatever you do, don't feed them eel. I dissected one of them once and they're poisonous to basically everything. But yeah, fish is the highest protein source they can get in the wild, and they seem to need that."

"Why that in particular?" asked Astrid, who was now mulling over the idea of cutting open an already-dead fish to look inside of it. What had he called it? _Dissection._ It seemed pointless to her, but apparently not to the bona-fide oracle that was Fishlegs.

"For a long time your guess would have been as good as mine" Fishlegs went on. "But then again, nobody knew just how intelligent they were. Why do you think _we_ eat a lot of fish?"

"We _catch_ a lot of fish?" Astrid shot back.

Fishlegs chuckled good-naturedly. "Well, that too, but also 'cause it's good for us and thus instinct tells us it's a good thing to eat."

Astrid thought for a moment. It was approaching winter and the only fish they had was what was frozen in storage for use in the months ahead – and, as she'd learnt earlier that day from Gobber, the fishing fleet was being readied to go and retrieve the rest of the Vikings from the dragon's island, so there was no way of getting more.

On the other hand, when she was little her mother had always said to her that a dragon's fire came from its stomach. Perhaps the Night Fury would be just fine with frozen fish.

"Thanks 'Legs, I owe you one."

"Any time! Just as long as that dragon doesn't get too hungry." He glanced around in mock nervousness. "I don't fancy becoming a meal for a fire-breathing lizard. I always envisioned myself as a slow-boil type, rather than char-grilled."

It was Astrid's turn to laugh as she walked up the hill towards the centre of the village. "Come on! You know as well as I do if it got to that stage you wouldn't exactly have much choice over the matter!" she called over her shoulder.

Astrid liked talking with Fishlegs. He was the only one of her contemporaries who was entirely sane, stable and safe to be around. Snotlout was intensely irritating, Tuffnut was utterly clueless and Ruffnut was plain crazy. Fishlegs was just amicable and level headed.

She cherished the moments she could steal away from reality, where she could forget the weight of their predicament and the magnitude of what Hiccup had done. Any semblance of normality had been rare of late and it was refreshing to see it from time to time.

Nonetheless, as she walked back towards Hiccup's house, she knew the moment was over, and the emotions were about to engulf her again.

* * *

Astrid hadn't bargained for just how hard it was going to be to pry open a front door with an armful of freezing cold mackerel.

It had taken her at least five minutes to get the handle down and the same again to lever the heavy door open enough that she could step inside. Gratefully, she let the fish fall from her arms, and they landed on the wooden floor with an incongruous clattering, owing to their frozen state. She eyed up the Night Fury in the room directly ahead of her – where Hiccup was – wondering if it would respond at all.

It didn't seem to; only the tiniest flick of one of its secondary ears gave any indication it had even registered her entrance. Otherwise, it was as normal, as if the only thing in the world for the dragon was Hiccup and the bed he lay on.

Sighing, she picked a single one of the fish back up and walked slowly, deliberately, towards the dragon, holding the fish out.

It still hadn't turned its head even as she came to a stop standing right next to the dragon's shoulder. In exasperation, she waved the fish around in front of the dragon's face, willing it to at least eat something. But she got no response, and after a while of trying, she conceded defeat and, throwing the fish back onto the pile, slumped down heavily, wearily - exhaustedly - into a nearby chair.

It had only been two days since they'd got back, but they'd taken a heavy toll on her. The village was divided, the Night Fury was incommunicado, and winter was fast approaching. And at the centre of this perfect storm of emotions and circumstances lay one frail, injured, unconscious boy – the root cause of all the uncertainty, unable as he was to explain any of it to them.

Astrid felt like she was finding her way on her own. As her eyelids slowly fell drowsily shut, her last waking thought was that, perhaps, she was feeling now precisely what Hiccup had been feeling all his life. Loneliness.

Her sleep was troubled and restless that night.

* * *

**Please review! It's always encouraging to hear people are enjoying what I'm writing...**

**As far as feedback goes, as always I'm worried about my characterisation of Astrid. Oh and Fishlegs' personality is deliberately a bit different from in the movie - I have him as quite easygoing cos there has to be some stability somewhere, and it sure as hell ain't gonna come from Stoick, Astrid, Toothless, Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut et al.**


	10. A Name to a Face

**A nice big update now for this story's 10th chapter (!) - this took me a _long_ time to get right, and I had a mean case of writer's block, but I'm starting to feel like the story's really starting to go where I want it to, and I think I should be able to update more frequently as I write faster.**

**Thanks to all my reviewers so far for giving me impetus! Keep it up PLEASE! It really is helpful.**

**Anyhoo, here ya go;**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 10**

**A Name to a Face**

Sunlight streamed in through the windows, and another day of difficulty began on the island of Berk.

Astrid woke slowly, her memory gradually trickling back details of the previous night's events to her. She had the vaguest of recollections of several fitful bursts of wakefulness throughout the night, and she did not feel at all well rested.

On the floor in the main hallway lay the pile of frozen fish she'd left there the night before. It was untouched – the Night Fury had been left alone with a pile of fish, and nobody to stop it eating them, and it hadn't even gone near them.

Astrid was at a loss to guess if the dragon had even slept since their magnificent last stand in the skies over the dragon's island. Certainly, whenever she'd been awake, so had the dragon, and she could only assume that in fact, the sleek black creature hadn't slept at all.

Its vigil was astounding Astrid. Hour after hour, day after day, it had stayed within feet of Hiccup, doing nothing but stare at him, and waiting for the boy to wake. Astrid got the distinct feeling that the dragon would simply continue to wait for as long as it took.

Nobody knew how long it _would_ take – that was the other thing. The healer had told her and Stoick, in a quiet moment aside, that the trauma Hiccup had suffered was so severe that there was truthfully no way to tell if the boy would wake up at all. Leg wounds were common amongst the panoply of injuries suffered by Vikings, but it was rare that severe burning was involved as well – Astrid could only think of one other injury that was even remotely similar. It had been when she was scarcely more than a toddler, but she could remember it vividly, because the man who'd suffered that wound had died not long afterwards.

Shoving such thoughts forcefully from her mind, Astrid stood and stretched herself out, a hundred different joints clicking and popping as she did. She had hardly been comfortable the night beforehand sleeping in the chair by Hiccup's bed, but she'd made a promise to Stoick to watch over Hiccup, and she'd stood by her word.

She now admitted to herself, though she never would have admitted it to anyone else, that actually she would have done the same whether or not Stoick had asked her to. The truth of the matter was that Astrid didn't quite understand just where her intense concern for Hiccup had come from all of a sudden, but she felt some long suppressed, vague and indistinct stirrings of emotions that she had never had reason to draw on before begin to move within her. All she really knew was, at the present time she cared for his welfare more than anything else, and she simply wanted him to live – to come back to the world of the living, and be a part of the tribe like he never had been in years prior.

She had tried to justify it to herself, but the myriad of reasons she'd come up with for her behaviour, whilst all true, did not seem to tell the whole story. Yes, she felt guilty over how she'd treated him. Yes, she simply wanted to thank him. But below these quite sincere emotions she sensed lay something still more profound, and more deep. She didn't know what it was yet, and it was still but a murmuring of things perhaps to come, but it was there, and many years down the line, she would look back on these moments as the point at which so much began to change about her.

At that moment, her stomach began to rumble, as if to admonish her for getting too introspective when there were practical problems – such as not having eaten for twelve hours – to attend to, and she quietly slipped out of the front door of Hiccup's house, and across to the Great Hall.

There were not many people there – the hour was early. She spied Gobber in one corner of the cavernous hall, chatting with a rather tired-looking Spitelout. Opposite, against the far wall, the Nadder she'd befriended on the voyage back to Berk lay slumbering – the Great Hall being the warmest place in the village, it had not taken long for the dragon to find it and make itself at home.

In fact, Astrid could just make out the Terrible Terror curled up there as well.

It all seemed so peaceful, but the tension in the air could have been cut with a knife. It permeated the whole village – the sense of something amiss. Perhaps it was to be expected – there _were_ dragons everywhere.

Wordlessly, silently, Astrid turned and walked straight back out into the open air, unable to bear the awkwardness a moment longer, and she let the door slam shut behind her.

She walked down to the cliff line, the grass beneath her feet glistening with morning dew and vibrant orange from the violently colourful sunrise, the clouds fluffy and innocent above her head and the air becalmed and still. The sounds that met her ears were gentle and quiet – the rustling of pine trees, the waves lapping at the rocks far below.

She sat down on the edge and merely thought for a while.

She was still there three hours later, and hadn't moved at all.

* * *

Thank the Gods, at least Hiccup's fever had broken.

Astrid's fit of introspection that morning had unsettled her somewhat, and true to form as far as she was concerned she'd tried to shake it off by being businesslike and productive – but nothing had worked. First, she'd tried again to feed the infuriatingly immobile dragon that was now basically a resident of the chief's house – but to no avail, and it was a similar story with Hiccup. She'd tried to gently sit him up and get some lukewarm broth into him, but all she'd succeeded in doing was pouring it down his front.

Finally, in her frustration, she'd flung herself down on the chair next to his bed and resigned herself to doing what she had already been doing for a number of days – waiting.

She cared deeply for Hiccup's wellbeing, and was taking the job of watching him very seriously indeed – Stoick had warned her that morning to not exhaust herself in the process, having seen just how much time she was actually spending with Hiccup – but she was beginning to suffer from a very acute problem. Boredom was setting in. Unconscious people do not make good company – though Hiccup had every excuse to be out cold after what he'd done – and neither do dragons that act like statues.

Sighing wearily, she cast around for something to occupy the time until the dawn, and her eyes alighted on a small, battered leather notebook lying in a semi-obscured corner of Hiccup's desk. She picked it up, and began idly flicking through the pages.

It wasn't that she was invading Hiccup's privacy - later she would look back and realize she'd simply been feeling curious about what made Hiccup tick. What exactly motivated the chief's son was one of Berk's most enduring unfathomables - and of course, she couldn't now simply talk to him and try to find out. Why she was curious in the first place, she wasn't quite sure – she hadn't been in the past – but regardless, the best she could do was put up with some sort of small window into his world - of which, this notebook was one.

The first few pages, dating from early summer, were all of machines she recognised - principally because often she and the rest of the tribe had had to contend with Hiccup wheeling them out at catastrophically inappropriate moments - such as in the middle of a raid. Amongst the beautifully-detailed line drawings was a contraption she'd heard referred to as the 'mangler' – a sort of automated bola-thrower, it looked if anything more dangerous to the person firing it than to the creature – presumably a dragon – that it was supposed to be aimed at. It seemed, to say the least, highly erratic, but Hiccup had drawn it well indeed.

_Perhaps he's motivated by obsession over detail._

She turned the next page, and suddenly found herself faced with an image of herself, sketched beautifully in wild, bold yet intricate strokes of jet-black charcoal, staring back out of the paper at her. Her breath caught instantly in her throat.

She'd known for a very long time that Hiccup had what might best have been described as a 'crush' on her - it had long been a major source of irritation. But to put this much effort in? The detail was extraordinary, every spike of her armour, every strand of her hair meticulously recreated - from memory, since there was no way Astrid would ever have posed for such a sketch.

It was beautiful – one of the most unexpectedly wonderful things Astrid had ever seen, and that included the sight of Hiccup riding into battle on the back of his Night Fury, something _nobody _had been expecting and _everyone_ was glad for. It was the drawing she found on the page afterwards, though, that really changed everything.

She flicked over the page, and the image that met her eyes was of an unbelievably sleek-looking Night Fury in profile - in flight. This was not in and of itself remarkable - Astrid knew all too well now what a flying Night Fury with a boy on its back looked like - but what made it suddenly interesting was the text that had been inked hurriedly into the top corner of the page. It was barely legible, but she could just make out a single word.

_Toothless._

Astrid frowned anew. That was the same word that Hiccup had been repeating over and over in his feverish bouts of sleep – and now the word clearly referred to the dragon. But why had he labeled it 'toothless'? Astrid had seen time and again that in fact the Night Fury had rather a lot of very sharp teeth indeed.

"Toothless?" she asked herself, "Why T-"

To her astonishment, however, at this point she was suddenly interrupted by the softest of questioning whuffling noises from directly behind her. She spun round suddenly, caught utterly off guard, and in amazement saw the dragon – whose gaze had previously not left Hiccup since Gobber had taken the boy's leg off – looking straight at her. Its eyes and its pupils were wide and questioning. It keened softly again at her, and cocked its head curiously.

Astrid looked at the drawing, then the dragon, and then back at the drawing again, trying to make sense of it all.

_Surely it wasn't...?_

She could think of no other possibilities though. Why else would it have responded so suddenly to this one word?

Toothless was clearly the dragon's _name_.

For a moment, Astrid sat transfixed. She'd assumed her conversation on the ship with Fishlegs, about giving her Nadder – which had at that point only just arrived – a name, had been in jest, and that the very idea of naming a dragon was preposterous, even if they were indeed as friendly as they seemed to be all of a sudden. But here was a dragon responding to a human-given name – a name Hiccup had given it.

_What sort of a bond must these two have had? Closer than anything he ever had with any of us._

_Whose fault is that? Ours._

The thoughts whirled through Astrid's head in a barrage of emotions, fighting for space.

This dragon – this beautiful, magnificent dragon that had saved Hiccup's life – seemed so intelligent. Perhaps it was. Not for the first time in the past three days, Astrid found herself faced with the unsettling notion of a dragon being simply more caring than she had ever been.

_Were we always the ones in the wrong?_

There was no doubt the Vikings had always been merciless with regards to dragons, and it had always been reciprocated. However, looking at the dragon before her, Astrid couldn't shake the feeling that none of the dragons' actions had ever been out of choice. The truly evil beast was that Red Death – her own private name for it – which Hiccup and Toothless – _Toothless_ – had killed.

_Would we have been as good? If a human had saved the life of a dragon, would we have laid down our arms and tried for peace? Wouls we have been so quick to forgive?_

_No. We would have gone on as before, and still thought ourselves the better for doing so._

The scenarios that began to play themselves out in her head – of them finding the Night Fury by itself and mercilessly, cruelly killing it; of Hiccup dying in his fight and them killing the Night Fury by way of some sort of twisted retribution – chilled her to the bone, for she realized that they all were feasible. They all could have – would have – happened.

_Toothless the Night Fury. _Astrid turned the words over again and again in her head.

Of course, none of this addressed the question of why Hiccup had chosen the name _Toothless_ in the first place. Astrid had been about to put this question into words, but the need was suddenly removed as the dragon cracked its mouth open a couple of inches, all the time looking straight at her. Astrid stared transfixed at the rows of teeth, beginning to think that the dragon was, if anything, proving her point, before suddenly and in the blink of an eye, every single one of them vanished into the dragon's gums.

Her jaw dropped.

_Retractable teeth?_

The dragon cocked its head at her.

_That explains a lot._

For the second time in as many minutes, Astrid was struck dumb, and a million and one images flooded her imagination, all concerning just what exactly Hiccup might have had to have done to get the dragon to put such level of trust in him that it would even contemplate letting the boy near. Perhaps the other way round – or both. They trusted each other. Once again, she was utterly awestruck – thunderstruck – at the closeness of the relationship she knew existed between Hiccup and the dragon.

_Toothless_.

It still felt strange calling a dragon by a name, but she felt her instinctive aversion to the creatures – something that had been drilled into her, as it had into every one of them, from the moment she was old enough to understand – begin to melt away as if it had been no more robust and no less transient than the winter's snow.

_Though it seems like it will never go away, that it is rooted there and there to stay, come the spring, it will all but melt away._

That rhyme was a common one amongst the little ones of the island – they had all learnt it when they were young – and though it talked about the snow, it seemed eerily applicable here.

Astrid shook her head in simple disbelief. So much – _so much – _was changing around her, and, she began to realize, so was she.

* * *

If Astrid thought she had been incredulous, the village's reaction, when she told them, was scarcely believable.

The range of emotions she'd seen spread out on the faces of the crowd in the tribal meeting had ranged from joyous to sullen, via confused, hysterical and interested. Nonetheless, they'd been persuaded eventually, when they heard just why the dragon had been named how it had.

She herself couldn't wait for Hiccup to wake up, if only so that he could tell them all just how he had managed to befriend the dragon in the first place. It was certain to make an interesting story; nobody was in any doubt of that.

Conversation was buzzing around the great hall – she could hear the dragon's newfound name being spoken practically every five seconds as people tried to get to grips with it.

She took the opportunity to slip quietly – unchecked – outdoors, and back to the chief's house. For some reason, she seemed recently to be preferring the peace and quiet that could be found there, rather than the incessant gossiping that could be found in the great hall almost every hour of the day, now that everyone was back from the dragon's island and there were stories to be told.

A though occurred to her on her way back. She'd finally managed to get Toothless to respond to her – perhaps now it would be willing to eat something?

With a slight smile on her face for the first time in what felt like years, she slipped away to the food stores which were, by all accounts, strictly off limits.

But so many rules had already been thrown clean out of the window. What was one more?

* * *

She'd been right.

Although Toothless had still been watching Hiccup when she walked in, he had looked at her this time as she entered and, upon catching sight of the armful of fish she was carrying, had bounded over to her and knocked her clean over in his enthusiasm.

Astrid had been sent sprawling on the floor, barely knowing what had hit her. She became aware almost immediately of what could only be described as a feeding frenzy going on behind her, where the fish had all been thrown as she'd been pole-axed by the overeager Night Fury. Turning to look, her eyes met with the sight of a dragon consuming fish at a rate that simply shouldn't have been physically possible. It wasn't even biting into them, merely swallowing. It was just as well – those fish were months old, the last of the autumn catch, although she had doubted Toothless would care, and she had been proved right.

Before she knew it, every single one of the fish was gone, and suddenly Toothless' face was inches from her own, the dragon crooning at her questioningly.

"There isn't any more, you overgrown salamander." Astrid grumbled as she hoisted herself somewhat shakily to her feet, doing her best to be disgruntled, though her heart wasn't in it.

Still slightly stunned at being knocked clean over before she'd even got in the door, Astrid stumbled over to the bedside chair and sat down heavily on it.

_How on earth did Hiccup ever get control of that dragon long enough to put a harness on him?_

Her thoughts wandered from there to the charred remains of the harness that they'd prised carefully off the Night Fury - so as not to hurt it more than it already was – in the immediate aftermath of the battle. Even in its bent, twisted and semi-complete state they could see how intricate it had originally been. Though none of them had voiced it, they'd all felt a silent awe at the boy – they'd known he was a decent smith, but this was better than anything they'd ever seen Gobber do, and he'd been smithing for nearly forty years. The blacksmith himself had said he was amazed at the detail.

It was impossible to recreate though – they didn't have enough to go on.

An orange glow through the windows showed that dusk was drawing slowly to a close. Astrid picked up Hiccup's notebook again and, settling herself in for another night of waiting, began to flick through the pages.

Sketch after sketch of Toothless – and few more of her as well – presented themselves, each more breathtaking than the last. On and on they went throughout the innocuous little black leather-bound book, vieing for her attention in all their beauty - until she reached the last page. On this was sketched something very different – a series of tiny, delicate and barely distinguishable diagrams. Squinting and holding the book close to her eyes, Astrid could just make out the shape of a saddle, and parts she recognised as having belonged to Toothless' harness.

Her curiosity piqued, she began rummaging around the desktop, looking for more of the same. Clearing a pile of small papers from the desk, she was astounded to discover several sheets of paper one on top of the other, each one half the size of the desk's surface, with incredibly intricate drawings of hundreds of parts and mechanisms, each of which was adorned with hundreds of scribbled labels.

The idea formed instantly in her mind. If they could do anything for Hiccup that might begin to make it up to him, it would be this.

In the morning, she knew she had some work to do.

* * *

"Gobber, can I have a word?"

It was a very cold morning, and the first of the winter's snow had fallen overnight. Around a foot of the stuff was lying on the ground, although the forge that Astrid now stood at the door of had melted the snow from an area around it, such was the heat that was given off. Astrid had left to find the blacksmith the moment she knew that he'd be at the forge. She had a favour to call in.

"Wha' is it, lass?"

Astrid took the rolls of paper out from under her arm – the diagrams of the harness she'd found the previous night – and laid them out on the table. Gobber's eyebrows shot up instantaneously and his jaw dropped.

"I found these last night on Hiccup's desk."

Gobber didn't seem to hear her. "Tha's _incredible_" he whispered, almost reverently. "Look at the _detail…_"

"Can you make it?"

That certainly got Gobber's attention, and stopped the Viking in his tracks. His eyes shot upwards and locked with hers, an astonished expression plastered on his face.

"Wha'ever _for?_"

"For Hiccup. You know as well as I do he's gonna want to ride Toothless the moment he's awake" said Astrid, still resolutely refusing to acknowledge the possibility that Hiccup might never wake – a possibility that had receded as the time he survived went on, but one that was nevertheless still very much there. Gobber, meanwhile, looked momentarily nonplussed at the mention of the dragon's name, before he cottoned on and he began to look deeply thoughtful.

"Astrid" the blacksmith said after a long moment of contemplative silence, "this is a _long_ job, an' it'll take up all o' my time from now on, an' I have other contracts-"

"I'll get Stoick to speak with the village. I'm sure they'll realize Hiccup deserves to wake up to us showing at least some acceptance of what he's done. Else" she added quietly, "he'll just up and leave again."

Gobber visibly stiffened, as concerned by the thought as she was, before his shoulders slumped.

"Yeh're righ', Astrid. I'll get to it." The Viking paused. "Though there is one thing I shoul' finish first."

"What?"

By way of response, Gobber shuffled off into one of the many backrooms, and after only a moment, returned carrying something wrapped tightly in a piece of cloth.

"I jus' thought Hiccup was gonna need this most of all" the blacksmith said quietly, sadly, before slowly letting the cloth fall to the floor.

Astrid gasped. Though it looked like no example she had ever seen, she knew instantly what it was. Gobber was holding a long, delicately carved and smoothed piece of pinewood that was attached at one end to a piece of cup-shaped steel, padded on the inside, and at the other end to an intricate arrangement of sprung metalwork that culminated at the base in a flat spade-like protrusion that was unmistakeably intended as a foot.

She was looking at Hiccup's new prosthetic leg.

She felt a lump immediately form in her throat, and Gobber's expression was sombre. Such a stark and sudden reminder of Hiccup's condition could not fail to be heart-rending, and Astrid was finding this out.

_Aren't I supposed to be stronger than this? I spent my entire childhood trying to be someone who wouldn't worry or care about battle wounds – indeed, someone's who'd rejoice in them._

_Then again, I never did see a real battle wound in all that time._

_The reality is a bit different._

And with that thought, the first tear trickled ever so slowly down her cheek.

She could make out unfinished carvings on the wood – intricate designs that were at once beautiful and soul-destroying for the memories they brought back. She could see Toothless' likeness carved into the top, and an unfinished image of Hiccup on the reverse side. If it were a purely objective exercise, she knew Hiccup would have loved the craftsmanship that had gone into making it.

As it was, even as she hoped so much for him to wake up, she dreaded it for what his reaction to learning of his injury might be.

Gobber broke the silence. "I'll get tha' harness started as well, lass, okay?" the blacksmith – Hiccup's former mentor, and the only one of any of them who'd been at least civil to the boy – said quietly. He was taking it hard as well.

It was hitting them all very hard, come to think of it. Nobody knew what the future held, and the uncertainty permeated the air and left a foul taste in the mouth.

It was a time of great worry, and all eyes were on one young man – still but a boy in reality – and whether, after all that had happened, he might just bring some hope. It was needed.

* * *

**There. Hope you enjoyed - Toothless is fun to write but it's bloody hard transitioning from narrating him as 'the dragon' or 'the Night Fury' to 'Toothless'. Hope I pulled it off!**

**As for those waiting for Hiccup to wake up and the angst to start - that all kicks off next chapter.**

**As always, PLEASE REVIEW! I really do feel like it's been a worthwhile excercise when I know people have been interested enough in it to respond - even if it's dreadful! XD**


	11. If All You Had Were Memories

**Ok, so I lied about faster updates... =P**

**Still, many many MANY thanks to all those who reviewed the last chapter (all twelve of you 0_o) - lots of useful feedback and I'm really sorry I haven't replied to all of them, I just haven't had time...**

**Anyhoo, here's chapter eleven...be aware this might be a smidgen different to what you're expecting, but still, I hope you like it. Please read & review!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 11**

**If All You Had Were Memories...**

The wind whirled and howled outside, and freezing drafts wormed their way through the cracks between the window shutters of Hiccup's room. Astrid sat huddled in several layers of fur, her breath practically frosting at the tip of her nose, shivering in the cold.

It was safe to say winter had arrived in Berk with a vengeance – it had been cold and dark for some time already, but this was the first of the bitter storms that always accompanied the deepest depths of the season, and already, it was beginning to show. Instead of staring at Hiccup like he had been for days on end, Toothless had instead in the past couple of days taken to laying his head lethargically on Hiccup's chest and sleeping where he was. He'd been like that when she'd got there – dragons were reptiles after all, and although their fire helped them stay warmer for longer than most reptiles, it had long been known that dragon attacks receded in frequency during winter because several dragon species hibernated, and the rest became so slow and sluggish that they were almost incapable of walking. Toothless was obviously the latter – he'd have been long asleep by now if he wasn't – but nonetheless, it reminded Astrid of times gone by. The latent heat in the house seemed to have prevented the dragon from becoming totally ineffectual, but nonetheless, he was hardly at his sharpest.

Astrid had arrived a couple of hours ago, breathless from running all the way from the forge as the visibility rapidly deteriorated and the winds began to pick up. Slamming the door in her haste to get indoors, she'd heard a loud, muffled _whumph_ from outside and had sighed exasperatedly as she realized just what this noise meant – some of the snow that had already been on the roof had fallen down outside the door. For now at least, there was no way she was getting back out.

If she'd been five minutes later, she wouldn't have been able to get _in_.

She was fine though – her parents knew full well that until Hiccup woke up, this would be where she was spending her nights. She'd covered the gaps and cracks in the walls and doors as best she could, lit a fire, and settled in for the wait.

It had been a week since she'd first asked Gobber to try to recreate Toothless' harness, a job the blacksmith had finished earlier that day after working round the clock all that week, and in that time Stoick had taken it upon himself to traipse halfway across the island with a hunting party to try to get some extra winter resources, given that the village unexpectedly now had to accommodate a Night Fury with an inevitably voracious appetite. Ever since Astrid had managed to get through even slightly to the initially uncommunicative dragon, it had eaten like there was no tomorrow.

Through that entire week though, Hiccup's new prosthetic leg had laid untouched in the corner of the room. The contraption unsettled her even when she so much as looked at it – it was a beautiful piece of craftwork to be sure, but it reminded her too much of the battle, and that in turn reminded her of the circumstances surrounding why it had happened in the first place – and _that _reminded her of the night Hiccup had left, and her role in it.

And every time she remembered, tears welled in her eyes and she had to fight them down.

How one object could mean so much, and be symbolic of so much, escaped Astrid, but nonetheless it was, and she wished with all her heart that it hadn't been needed in the first place.

Toothless was gradually stirring, a low and gentle rumble filling the room, the dragon purring softly as he cracked one eye open and looked straight at Astrid.

Not in the mood for any sort of profound connection of the sort that had been going on a lot in recent times, she raised a hand quickly in acknowledgement before quickly withdrawing it back into the warmth of the furs she'd wrapped tightly around her.

Despite the cold, she could feel her own drowsiness beginning to overtake her, and her eyelids grew heavy. She strained for a moment to keep them open and stay awake and alert, but very rapidly gave up, seeing no point in the exercise, and she slumped lower in the seat, burying herself in the warmth and curling up into a ball, feeling unconsciousness begin to envelop her.

She was just on the cusp of falling asleep completely, when a surprised, excitable yelp from Toothless jolted her straight back into an irritated wakefulness.

Astrid barely had time to realize that the dragon's suddenly wide and alert eyes were fixed on something directly to her left, and that he was sitting bolt upright with his ears straight up and curious, before the Night Fury abruptly shot out from behind the bed, passing within inches of knocking her chair over as he dove enthusiastically for whatever it was that he had seen.

After she'd regained her balance – and her composure – Astrid turned to look behind her, to try to work out what it was that had so suddenly piqued Toothless' interest.

The sight that met her eyes made her double up in laughter, despite everything. From behind an enormous pile of heavy winter clothing heaped high in the corner, Toothless' head poked up, his expression one of complete and utter innocent bewilderment. Around one of his big black ears hung one of the steel hoops that Astrid recognised as part of the newly-completed harness that she'd brought with her from the forge, and firmly clamped in the dragon's mouth were a couple of the leather straps of the same origin.

The dragon was quite a picture – he looked utterly ridiculous, and Astrid's laughter redoubled as the dragon snorted indignantly at her mirth, tried to free himself, and promptly fell over his own feet in his distraction.

Slowly getting her laughter under control, Astrid finally felt able to stand up and walk over to where Toothless was lying on the floor, looking more confused than she'd ever seen him. She put her hands on her hips and stood over the dragon, raising an eyebrow.

"You're completely ridiculous" she told him, matter-of-factly. Toothless merely cocked an ear – the one with the piece of harness around it – at her by way of response, and sighing in mock weariness, Astrid reached down and lifted the metal hoop up off the same ear.

Toothless rolled nonchalantly, as if to get up, but then froze as his eyes locked on the new tailfin that Gobber had crafted. Made to exactly Hiccup's design in terms of its structure and mechanisms, the blacksmith had decided – and Astrid had enthusiastically agreed once he'd told her – that there should be some sort of way to indicate to Hiccup he was not at least welcome in the village, and had gone about this by using leather that was coloured brightly red and emblazoned with a vivid white version of Berk's traditional emblem for the new tailfin.

Toothless seemed to approve, because before Astrid could so much as start to go and pick it up, Toothless had grabbed the tailfin in his – now actually toothless – mouth and proceeded to start jumping around the room in wild abandon, knocking over the chair Astrid had been sitting on, along with several other pieces of large furniture – in the process.

Astrid slid her hand slowly down her face as she watched the most hyperactive dragon she'd ever come across with detachment and a certain amount of exasperation.

_Hiccup would have to pick this one to befriend, wouldn't he?_

Finally, Toothless landed in front of her, grinned at her gummily, the tailfin still firmly fastened in his mouth, and thumped his enormous tail repeatedly on the floor. It was all Astrid could do not to grab on to the mantelpiece as the house shook in response to this, and hurriedly, realizing what the dragon wanted, she grabbed the rest of the harness and walked towards him.

Instantly, the dragon was stock-still, and as she fumbled through putting the harness on, all the time marvelling at the complexity of it, she could feel Toothless quivering in what she could only assume was excitement. She hoped he wasn't getting the wrong idea.

"I hope you don't think I'm taking you flying."

The dragon's head snapped round and it fixed her with its wide eyes.

"Have you _seen_ the weather outside? Plus there's not a hope in _Hel _I'd know how to work this thing." She paused, before adding quietly, "And anyway, wouldn't you rather Hiccup was the first to fly you with this new harness?"

After a moment, the dragon crooned softly in what seemed like acquiescence, but she carried on putting the harness on, thinking it might perhaps offer him some comfort. She was correct. As soon as she'd fastened the tailfin on, Toothless walked straight back to the bed and took the artificial tailfin back into his mouth, even despite the fact that it was now attached to his own tail, before settling his head back down on Hiccup's slowly rising and falling chest, and dropping back off to sleep.

Astrid was silent for a very long time after that. In effect, she'd just witnessed how important the power of flight was to the dragon – it seemed it associated the harness with it, which was to be expected at any rate – and that led her to wonder, yet again, just how close the two of them – Hiccup and Toothless – were, that Hiccup had tried so hard to give such a thing back to the dragon, having inadvertently taken it away.

* * *

The times when Berk was at its most beautiful, it seemed, were the times immediately after it was at its most tumultuous. Sure enough, the morning after the storm found the snow on the ground pristine white and, though the temperature was still bitter cold, the sun was bright in the sky.

Astrid's footsteps fell softly and silently, leaving deep imprints in the two-foot-deep blanket of snow that covered the forest floor. Her breaths were even and measured, her eyes determined and focused.

Hunting was one of the most cathartic things Astrid knew of. Whenever something had troubled her in the past, a hunting trip had always helped clear her mind and senses, and this was no exception. Having seen the beautiful weather in the morning, she'd had no hesitation is slipping quietly out of the door, stealing over to her own house in the becalmed dawn to retrieve her hunting bow and poison-tipped arrows, and setting off into the forest, leaving nothing but a small note on a table to say where she was.

Though she'd seen nothing in the whole time she'd been out that might have qualified as worth shooting, she knew there was something out there somewhere. She'd hunted enough to know to be patient – as with many other things, Astrid had always excelled at hunting, outclassing every one of the teenagers and a good few of the adults. Dragon-slaying had been much the same, but she would not even entertain the thought of killing a dragon now – it normally took a lot to change Astrid's mind, but then, a lot _had_ happened.

The slightest of rustlings in the bushes ahead caught her attention, and just as she caught a glimpse of the doe emerging from out behind a tree, without really thinking she brought her bow up, drew back and fired in one single, fluid motion.

The arrow sailed at blistering speed through the air, tracking straight and true. In the milliseconds that ensued, Astrid followed it with her eyes, sure that this was a certain kill, and that she'd have something to show for her efforts. She was sure Stoick would appreciate it – he was due home today.

However, just as she thought that, a miniature, vivid green blur shot across her vision, and the arrow was snatched clean out of the air. The deer instantaneously bolted, shooting off into the undergrowth in a flurry of green and white as snow fell from the disturbed foliage.

Slightly stunned, and very irritated, Astrid glanced down to the forest floor, and her eyes fell upon none other than the Terrible Terror she'd befriended on the boat, the shaft of the arrow clutched in its beak. It gazed straight back at her, a look of simplistic, benign innocence plastered on its face. It chirruped proudly at its catch, seeming to be blissfully ignorant of Astrid's rapidly rising indignation.

Seething, Astrid marched over and snatched the arrow clean out of the dragon's mouth. It yelped indignantly, and snapped at the hand now holding the wooden arrow, trying to retrieve its prize.

Astrid merely held it above her head, and scowled at the dragon, trying for all the world to stay angry and yet somehow, failing to do so. The damn thing was so mischievous as to be strangely lovable.

A pathetic whining from the miniscule reptile sealed the deal, and Astrid relented, surreptitiously snapping off the poisoned tip of the arrow before sighing and handing it back to the Terror, which twittered happily, snatched it, and promptly began scrabbling and snapping away at it, only stopping when it the arrow was lying in several pieces on the ground.

Astrid was preoccupied with wondering why it had suddenly become so difficult to remain angry at any of the dragons. She was not normally the sort of person who would be disarmed by cuteness or quirkiness.

She turned away, determined still to have something to show for her hunting trip, and made to stride purposefully away. She'd only taken one step though, before she felt something tug at the base of her leg. She glanced down, and was more than a little exasperated to see the diminutive dragon biting the material of her lower leggings and pulling in the opposite direction to that which she had been about to walk.

"_Now _what?" she snapped. The Terror didn't even bat an eyelid, instead pacing away a few steps before turning and seeming almost to beckon her with its head.

Not willing to be drawn into yet another ploy, Astrid made to leave again. The dragon was persistent however, and again she felt it tugging at her leggings before she'd so much as taken a step.

_So much for solitude._

The dragon chirruped at her again.

_I'd better humour it or it'll never leave me alone again._

Exasperatedly, she turned and began walking in the direction the dragon seemed to want her to. Seemingly satisfied, it hopped up onto her shoulder and began to direct Astrid where it wanted her to walk merely by pivoting its head on its shoulders and looking.

_Wanted a lift, did we?_

Astrid could hear the benign sarcasm even in her own thoughts. She reminded herself a little of Hiccup when he was at his best.

She missed that.

Before long, her traipsing through the snow-covered scenery brought her to a shallow downwards incline. Warily, she paced her way down, watching her feet as they dug into a particularly deep snow drift. Stumbling slightly at the bottom, she looked up to see a low rock arch leading into an open cove.

It looked somehow vaguely familiar, but for the life of her, she couldn't work out why it would have been. She'd certainly never been hunting or training here before, and she didn't often come into these woods for anything other than those two things.

Puzzled, and upon the Terror's prompting by way of a nudge to the back of her head, she stepped under the rock and into the clearing.

Even in winter, when everything was one colour and one colour only – white and lots of it – it was very beautiful. The light caught the tops of the cliffs around in such a way that brilliant patterns were thrown onto the ground below, and the lake in the middle shimmered brilliantly in the sun.

The feeling of familiarity was growing, but still she couldn't place it.

Astrid noticed an area of ground in the corner of the cove that was covered by a cliff overhang and clear of snow and, relieved of the chance to sit down somewhere that wouldn't freeze the extremities if one stayed for too long in one place, she made her way towards it – and froze, as she recognised pristine, preserved human footprints and dragon pawprints, within inches of one another. Instantaneously, everything fell into place.

Months earlier, this had been the place Hiccup and Toothless had made good their escape from. The place she'd followed Hiccup to in the dead of night, and there had lost him.

Her jaw dropped involuntarily open and she turned her head slowly to look at the small dragon on her shoulder, wondering just how on earth it had known of this place. She could only surmise that Hiccup had somehow befriended it before he'd left, but she had no idea how he could have done – this was the dragon from the training ring and to her knowledge, it had not left there until they'd taken it on that boat with them to the dragon's island.

She remembered, with a pang of guilt, the cruelty they'd inflicted on it, thinking it in some way justified.

Why had it brought her here? Did it somehow know of the conflicts that were going on within her, and wanted to show her somewhere that had been very special to the boy she was so dedicatedly looking after? Certainly it seemed the dragon had a knack for showing her important things at important times – she remembered its actions on the beach in the aftermath of the battle, when it had been the one that had showed her she was the only one who could persuade Toothless to let Hiccup go, even for a second.

At that moment, Astrid was filled with a great desire to know more about the place – to see and feel what Hiccup had seen and felt, at least to some extent. Again, she couldn't quite work out why.

The next few hours were passed in a haze of exploration and happy discovery. Of particular note to Astrid was something she'd noticed within the first thirty minutes or so of looking around – the frantically-scratched claw marks on the cliff face surrounding.

Toothless had become trapped here, she surmised. That explained at least how Hiccup had been able to make contact with him at all.

As she wandered within the confines of the cove, her mind wandered without any confines whatsoever. In the end, though, she came to one single thought.

_We were wrong. We need to show him we know that now._

Something clicked within her and she felt some small part of the weight lift from her heart, as at least now she had something she knew she could do to improve things.

She left that cove in good heart.

How soon things change.

As she walked out of the woods and came back towards the village, she gradually began to notice people walking to and fro. The smile slipped slowly from her face, to be replaced with concern, as she noticed that their postures looked slightly stiffer than normal, their gait more hurried, and that most of them were going in one direction – towards the chief's house.

Their faces looked grim. Sorrowful.

Astrid's heart skipped a beat.

Surely it was nothing…?

Nonetheless, she hurried forward with the rest of them. Rounding the corner, her eyes stared up the hill on which stood the chief's house – the house she'd stayed at for the past fortnight or more.

There was a crowd of silent Vikings gathered round the door. Every man's head was bowed, and all was utterly, deathly silence.

_No…_

* * *

**Read&Review...**


	12. What Will You Feel? What Will You Do?

**Right, I finally bulldozed my way past an infuriating bout of writer's block and got this out of my system. It's somewhat of a watershed moment in the story and I hope I did it justice, though as ever I'm fearful that I didn't. That's why the review button exists though - to tell me one way or the other!**

**To all those who are worried Hiccup is dead, well read on! All I will say is that I felt the need for an evil cliffhanger, and all is not as it seems.**

**Many, _many_ thanks to all those who reviewed the previous chapter - as always, extremely helpful in getting myself in gear for the next one! I'm glad to see interest in this story isn't waning as my laziness increases! XD (I will do better on the next chapter, PROMISE) XD**

**Right, here we go...**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 12**

**What Will You Feel? What Will You Do?**

Before she really knew it, Astrid was running, _sprinting_ up the hill towards the crowd of sombre-faced men and women who were gathered outside the door, praying to every God whose name she could remember in the heat of the moment that the news was not the worst.

_To have come so close…_

Of all the things that could have happened, she didn't deserve this – _Hiccup_ didn't deserve this.

Wasn't this supposed to be some sort of happy ending? He'd _survived_.

He had to have done.

Breathlessly cresting the brow of the hill, she hurried over to the house, her eyes wide in trepidation. It almost wasn't in her to ask at all, but nonetheless she shouted at the top of her voice, an edge of desperation all too evident.

"What is it? What's going on?"

All eyes turned to her, and her heart sank further as several people almost immediately turned away again and cast their gaze downwards.

She felt panic begin to rise in her chest.

"_Tell me what's going on!"_

She felt a firm but gentle hand grip her shoulder, and she turned to see Stoick standing behind her, his own face a grim mask of concern and worry.

She crumbled there and then, her voice rising to a hysterical pitch as the most awful of scenarios seemed to manifest itself in reality right before her eyes.

"_NO! He CAN'T be dead! He CAN'T…!"_ she screamed, again and again, casting her gaze wildly around as the tears began to fall, looking for someone, _anyone_, to tell her that this was all some awful dream, that it wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

Stoick's voice was all she heard, speaking softly against the wind.

"Astrid, calm yourself, child. He isn't."

Her head snapped round, and hope filled her chest once again, if only for a second. But then, just as rapidly, it left her, as reality forced its way back in. "Then why are you all here?"

A pause.

"He woke up about fifteen minutes ago, Astrid."

To Astrid, it seemed as if the world stopped at that moment.

_He's awake…_

She wanted so badly then to believe that it was all okay – that this was the end of her fearing for his life every day. That perhaps they could at least resume some semblance of normality, albeit one that involved him and his dragon this time. But she couldn't believe that. Not when the faces of the villagers still spoke wordlessly of some unknown grief.

Something was still badly awry.

"Then what's wrong?" Her voice was quiet, fearful – terrified, even. If not that he was dead, then what could be concerning them so?

Stoick sighed wearily. "He's not himself, lass. He's completely absent - he won't talk to anyone, not even his dragon".

"Let me go see him." Astrid's response was instant asnd instinctive, and she felt the feeling of responsibility that she'd felt so many times recently begin to grip her again.

_If Hiccup's in trouble, I want to help._

She'd resigned herself to not understanding why she felt the way she did some time ago, but it didn't stop her feeling it.

"Astrid…" the chief sighed again. "He's worrying us all the way he's acting, and we've all seen how much you've come to care for him…"

"I don't care. Perhaps I can help. Stoick…" Astrid implored, daring to use the chief's name for the first time in a long time.

"You _have _to let me see him."

The chief stood still for a moment, eyeing her with what looked unnervingly like pity, before he strode slowly towards the door of his house, and pushed it silently open.

Steeling herself, and feeling her heart hammering in her chest, Astrid crossed the threshold and walked slowly up the stairs. Memories flooded back of the night Hiccup had interrupted them ridiculing him – the night he'd left. She remembered the anguish in his eyes, and she realised with a start that, despite all that happened between then and now, that was the last time she'd heard his voice.

It brought a lump to her throat to think how callous they'd been, and she stopped for a moment at the top of the staircase, lost in her own thoughts, before forcibly composing herself, thinking that now was most certainly not the time for self-pity, and silently, tentatively pushing open the door.

* * *

Tendrils of darkness swam before his eyes and his thoughts tumbled and whirled incoherently within his head. He sat motionless on the bed, only vaguely aware of the increasingly frantic noises Toothless was making as the dragon tried to get his attention. He was utterly confused - traumatised and feeling it.

Hiccup had woken up screaming, the last remnants of his memories of the battle still wracking his mind and tearing him apart from the inside. Now, as the horrific images subsided to be replaced with a silent facsimile of nothingness, he found it hard to recall anything at all of what it was that had left him as he felt now.

He trembled where he sat, his arms and hands quivering slightly even as he set his jaw in a thin and strained line to try to mask the cacophany of incoherent rambling thoughts and recollections that flitted in and out of his mind.

He remembered falling, but he couldn't remember why, how, or where, nor what he was falling into. Vague images of a massive grey shape speckled with streaks of bloody violent red swam in and out of his thoughts, but he couldn't remember what it was or why it was significant. The only clear memory he had was of lifting off into a brilliant blue sky with Toothless, in a state of some considerable alarm, heading somewehre at blistering pace and in a panicked and worried state - but even then, he couldn't remember why.

The creaking of the door just barely infiltrated the fog of his mind, and it took him what seemed like forever to work up the willpower to even raise his head and look at who it was.

The answer, once it came, sent shockwaves through him, and brought it all flooding so cruelly back.

There stood a beautiful, blonde Viking girl, in an armoured skirt, with a thin leather headband, and she wore a look of such worry that his heart went out to her even before he remembered who she was. But then, images began cycling though his mind, one after another.

This girl, laughing along with many other teenagers, all at his expense as he merely passed them by.

This girl, forcing him down into the dirt on the arena floor and humiliating him in front of a great many others.

This very girl, laughing and joking about him, with his own father.

_His own father._

That was the tipping point, and in a moment of lucidity, he remembered her name, and snapped.

* * *

Astrid stood transfixed as the expression on Hiccup's face changed with such astonishing rapidity, within the space of a couple of seconds, from neutral and distant, to compassionate, to suspicious, and then finally to a look of such seething, broiling anger the likes of which she had never come anywhere near close to seeing from him, and only once in her entire life from anyone in the world.

It was the expression the chief had worn the night his wife, Valhallarama, had been so brutally taken from him. It was a look of incoherent rage so potent as to be dangerous from anyone, even someone who up until a couple of weeks ago she'd thought incapable of harming even a grasshopper.

Perhaps it was exacerbated somewhat by the fact that Hiccup _had_ just killed a dragon almost the size of the island they were currently standing on, but then it was not so much fear she felt, but worry.

She'd feared his reaction, but this was awful. Presently, it wasn't really him in there.

That didn't make it any less real, though.

She backed up a single step, and in a hesitant voice, said only one word.

"Hiccup..."

It was all she had time to say, before the nightmare truly started.

"Don't you _dare _say my name". Hiccup's voice was as cold as the snow outside and just as hospitable. His features, which she had grown accustomed to seeing so angelic and restful as he lay there unmoving for weeks on end, was twisted into a bitter snarl.

"Why are you even here?" he went on, all the time staring straight ahead, refusing to so much as glance in her direction.

"I've been watching you for weeks, Hiccup -"

"Why, 'cause you thought it was funny?" he snarled. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Hiccup..."

"Save it" Hiccup snapped, and in one fluid motion, flung the covers off the bed and swung round purposefully, as if to stand up. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped dead, his expression changing to one of utter uncomprehending shock. Momentarily confused, Astrid followed his line of sight, and as her gaze alighted upon his missing leg, she gasped softly.

_He didn't know_.

She cursed herself that nobody had even tried to tell him, and as a result he'd now found out for himself, in the most cruel of ways. She couldn't imagine what might be going through his mind, but she stepped forward nonetheless and crouched down in front of him, taking one of his suddenly limp and unresisting hands into her own.

"What happened, Astrid?" Hiccup whispered almost inaudibly after a long moment of incomprehending silence, slowly looking up at her as a single, solitary tear ran down his cheek.

Astrid's voice was soft and compassionate as, after a moment, she replied, "You fell, Hiccup, and your leg was so badly burnt Gobber_ had _to amputate it, or you would have..." Astrid didn't finish the sentence, pausing instead, uncertain just how much Hiccup knew of what had transpired on the beach on the dragon's island. "Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember."

Another pause.

"You've been unconscious for nearly a month, Hiccup. I was..."

She tried to fight the rising tide of sorrow in her heart, but she felt her eyes begin to sting with tears of her own. The pretence of strength and emotional detachment she'd held herself in with an iron grip for much of her life rang hollow now, irrelevant and callous and utterly appalling. What good would it do anyone now to bottle up one's emotions and hide then from sight?

"I was scared, Hiccup. Scared you were gone for good" she admitted.

Hiccup's eyebrows shot up at this, and Astrid couldn't honestly blame him. His last memory of them had been of being described as 'not a true Viking'. To hear that she was concerned for his welfare now was surely highly confusing - it sometimes confused _her_ - but nonetheless, she was.

She gently squeezed his hand in some sort of an attempt at reassurance. "Listen...I know I was wrong about you. I'm so, so sorry for the way I treated you - we all are."

Hiccup's eyes were boring into her, and she looked down, unable any more to hold back her tears.

"I want to help you get better, somehow. Please...just let me?"

"Why?"

"Because I saw what you did and I realized I'd been wrong all along, and I want to fix that, or at least help... Hiccup, you're wounded inside, almost as badly as you are on the outside, and just as with that, it won't get better if you don't let someone help."

She brought her free hand up and clasped his other hand tightly, and looked directly into his eyes.

"Please."

He looked utterly shellshocked, bewildered by everything that had happened, but his voice was strangely calm as he looked her straight in the eye and, without any hint of resentment or anger but instead a strange kind of cautious hope that had so far been so conspicuously absent, asked;

"What's so different now, Astrid? Why am I suddenly a hero?"

"You saved every single one of us, Hiccup, and that's why we're all suddenly acting as we are, but to be honest, I think you always were a hero of sorts. We were just too stupid to notice." She paused. "I certainly was. I thought of you as weak, but you never were. You were always stronger than any of us. All that's changed is that you've made it obvious."

She let her words sink in for a moment, still crouching down before him and cradling his slightly trembling hands in her own, before she continued.

"I know it's going to take a long time for you to accept that we've changed our minds, Hiccup, but please, just come with me outside, and let the village see that you're getting better. They're all worried about you. _All _of them."

At this, Toothless finally interjected. Having sat silently and patiently behind the bed as he waited for Hiccup to steel and steady himself, the dragon now padded slowly round the bed and nuzzled the boy's chest with his head, softly purring in reassurance.

This seemed to give Hiccup the final ounces of strength he needed. Placing one hand on Toothless' head and gripping Astrid's arm firmly with the other, he rose from the bed, a look of determination set fast on his face. Astrid reached for his prosthetic and carefully attached it to his leg, and although he winced and flinched slightly as she did so, he did not try to stop her.

Perhaps, after all, after everything, there was hope.

Slowly, the three of them made their way down the stairs, and Astrid pushed the front door open, to be met by a sea of silent, admiring, awe-filled eyes that gazed reverently at the boy and his dragon. Astrid too watched on, hope sending her heart soaring higher than it ever had before.

She knew it was going to be difficult. She knew Hiccup was not even close to dealing with all the anger, hurt and sadness that had been brewing his whole life and that had been brought into sudden, pin-sharp focus by the loss of his leg and his gaining of the village's sudden respect. But she also knew, with an equal and burning certainty, that he could, and would, make it out of the dark.

She was as determined as ever to help him get there - it was the least he deserved from her. Though her conscious thoughts still reasoned that it was a feeling of responsibility for one of her own in need that motivated her so strongly, unbeknownst to her as of yet, deep within her began to stir one final emotion, one more potent even than anything that had gone before over the past few weeks and months, one that as of yet remained untapped and preciously rare, one that in Viking societies was rarely observed and poorly understood, but one that was known at the very least to be perhaps the most magnificent of all the human traits.

Something irreversible and so very very beautiful had begun. Though she did not know it yet, and wouldn't have admitted it if she did, she was falling deeply, irrevocably in love with him.

* * *

**Starting to try to get towards fulfilling the Hiccup&Astrid classification this story has, as you can see...it will take time to develop, as it has been, so that I can try and narrate a realistic basis for it, and make it seem like more than just a stress-of-nearly-dying-but-getting-away-with-it relationship as people sometimes complain seems to happen in the movie.**

**PLEASE Read&Review! It's so damn helpful when you do...XD =P**


	13. Not So Straightforward

**Blimey, it's been a while hasn't it? Sorryyy...*embarrassed face***

**My tardiness is in part due to business IRL and party due to yet another debilitating bout of writer's block. However, it has given me a chance to think on where I want this fic to go, and so hopefully there should be slightly more regular updating going on. No promises though.**

**A huge thankyou to all the people who reviewed chapter twelve - ninety-eight reviews altogether! Holy ****...how'd that happen? XD**

**Right, here it is...**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 13**

**Not So Straightforward**

Hiccup woke slowly, the pain in his stump manifesting itself gradually in his mind as the last tendrils of blissful sleep withered away and full consciousness returned. A week had passed, and although he'd become better at hiding it, the agony had not even begun to subside – still it felt as if his leg was still attached and was being torn from him anew every single morning, such was the pain.

Slowly, gritting his teeth, he swung himself around and planted his good foot on the floor, at the same time reaching for the prosthetic leg that leant silently against the head of his bed, an ever-present reminder of what had transpired.

The rug in the corner of the room was conspicuous for the fact that Toothless was not in it, holed up as he was at present in the Mead Hall whilst the awful winter weather persisted. Astrid had told Hiccup of the vigil the dragon had held for weeks on end. Hiccup had no idea how long dragons could go without sleep, but judging by Toothless' bouts of lethargy in the days since Hiccup had woken up, it was a good deal shorter than the time Toothless had in actuality spent awake.

Plus, of course, they both were tired for another reason entirely.

A battle like the one Hiccup had been though takes a lot out of a person, and indeed a dragon – something he was only just coming to learn. He felt utterly drained of everything – stamina, willpower, emotion. He couldn't even summon within himself a great deal of anger at what had happened, even though, in a detached manner, he knew he should have been able to. The whole village seemed to be expecting him to launch into some tirade at his treatment – they seemed willing even to accept it, almost to _want _it, which was something Hiccup had not been expecting when he'd flown into battle.

Mind you, he hadn't been expecting to come out of that alive.

Life in Berk was most decidedly _not_ back to normal, and probably never would be. In the previous seven days, Hiccup had heard all the stories from Astrid of how dragons had begun appearing in the village in greater and greater numbers, how more and more of the Vikings were 'pairing off' with them and befriending them. He heard how the little Terrible Terror from the training ring had proven unnervingly adept at directing Astrid to important locations at exactly the right point. He'd heard how the Deadly Nadder that was now a regular fixture in the village, invariably squawking away at the coming of the dawn, had flown straight onto the Vikings' ship, and announced itself in the most unusual of ways, during the initial voyage home from Helheim's Gate.

He'd also been there when Astrid had finally come up with a name for the bright-blue nuisance, as the Nadder had been affectionately known to start with. It was hardly imaginative, but based on the juxtaposition of a dragon that could shoot deadly, bony spears out of its tail having been utterly terrified of a boisterous, overeager Viking three-year-old that had by chance come its way a couple of days ago, to such an extent that the dragon had clambered onto the nearest roof and tried ridiculously to hide behind the slender chimney stack, Astrid had decided to take a leaf out of Hiccup's book and called the thing _Spineless_.

It did fit the creature rather well, but Hiccup was surprised at Astrid's instant grasp of the irony of the name, given that he'd always been the sarcastic one.

Dragging himself back to the present, Hiccup winced slightly as he tightened the straps of the prosthetic around his upper thigh and hauled himself to a standing posture, all the while keeping a vice-like grip on the bedpost. At first, he'd been utterly incapable of even staying on his feet without Astrid's arm clamped either reassuringly around his waist or solidly under his arm to hold him upright. Slowly, day-by-day, he'd begun to take little baby steps, crying out in pain with each and every one, and taking a great many tumbles in the protest.

Despite everything, he took some heart in the fact that nobody had laughed or mocked. That was not something he was used to.

Nonetheless, he remained convinced that the village still did not truly want him. Why would they? Fundamentally, he was not a different person to the boy who'd flown away on his dragon in the early autumn, leaving everything and everyone he knew, all his responsibilities and obligations as the son of the chief ground into dust in his mind and scattered to the wind to be absolved and forgotten.

A man recovering from an injury has a lot of time to think, and Hiccup was a thinking person anyway. Slowly, self-blame began to creep into the darker recesses of his mind and from there it spread. He began to see himself as the reason the Vikings had even set out to the dragons' island in the first place, and conveniently paid no heed to the fact that it was him who'd saved them.

He wondered whether in fact they'd been justified in their views of him from the very beginning. Was he useless like they said he was? Very possibly.

So it was with a face set in stone and not a shred of humour in his eyes that he limped slowly to the door and pushed it open.

Snow was a challenge in Berk at the best of times, and this was not for Hiccup anything close to the best of times, as far as mobility was concerned. Walking through the fine white icy powder with a leg made of inflexible, easily-cooled metal was unutterably difficult.

But he had to speak to _someone_, and so it was that he trudged on through the snow drifts, paying no heed to the daggers of pain that shot up his leg, seeming even to originate from a foot that was not there, heading for the only place he knew that he could find someone to comfort him.

It did not escape him that this should have been, but was not, his father, and instead, was Astrid.

* * *

A rush of cold air signalled the opening of the door, but Astrid did not mind. She knew exactly what it meant, and instantly left her place by the hearth to hurry to the door and grab Hiccup around the waist before he collapsed across the threshold.

This was something she had learnt to do the first time Hiccup had made it to her front door, after the boy had only just got the door open before crumpling to his single remaining knee and howling in agony at the impact of the injured one on the hard and abrasive wooden floor. It had hurt her almost as much as it had hurt him, and now she knew that the moment Hiccup got through the door, you dropped everything else.

That included feeding a Terrible Terror, which was what she had been in the middle of doing when the door swung open this time.

Sure enough, an indignant yelp from the little dragon followed her as she hurried over towards the door, but she paid it no heed. Hiccup was there, one white-knuckled hand clamped hard onto the upright of the doorframe, the other extended outwards in some attempt at balance.

Gently but firmly, reassuringly, she wrapped an arm around his midriff and lifted slightly. It took the pressure off his bad leg and transferred some of his weight onto something stable – herself – and as she did it this time, she heard him exhale softly in relief.

"Thanks, Astrid" he breathed out wearily, sounding utterly exhausted even now, as they slowly, awkwardly made their way over to the hearth, Astrid unceremoniously kicking the door shut behind her. Slowly, Astrid lowered Hiccup to a sitting position, careful not to jar his injury, and she followed, sitting on her knees next to him for a moment.

Hiccup had been visiting with increasing regularity, and Astrid didn't mind. She knew full well why it was – somehow, she'd become the only thing linking Hiccup with any sort of normality. Both literally and figuratively, she was his stability, and while he was recovering, the more time he spent with her, it seemed, the better it was for him.

Stoick had barely been seen in the village that entire week by anyone, and judging by the darkening of Hiccup's face the moment she ever tried to broach the subject in conversation, this had extended to Hiccup. It was plain as day that the chief was having a hard time coming to terms with all that had happened, and judging by the state Astrid had seen him in on the boat on the voyage back from the dragon's island, Stoick was in no fit state to provide any sort of fatherly love, or familial stability, or reassurance. It had hardly been his style as it was, and now that his own foundations had been so comprehensively shaken up, Astrid understood why the chief felt he couldn't see his son altogether that much.

It didn't make things any better for Hiccup though.

Astrid knew that the reasons he'd left ran very deep indeed and would take years to uncover fully, but that the final straw had been Hiccup's overhearing them discussing him in less-than-favourable terms. Stoick had been front and centre in that – as had she – and though it seemed Hiccup had forgiven her, at least for now, it was obvious to anyone that he didn't quite know how to feel about his father. He hadn't said anything, but his behaviour made it obvious, and the same went for Stoick.

Hiccup brusquely undid the straps of the prosthetic and rolled it quickly to one side, vigorously massaging the stump to get some warmth back into it – something the healer had told him was absolutely critical, even though it still hurt a lot to do. Winter was the worst time to get a leg injury because of this, but that's what had happened, and somehow they just had to muddle through.

Astrid sat behind him and rubbed her hands quickly up and down his shoulders, trying to get some heat into the rest o him. She felt the tension slowly release from them and his shoulders slumped in a mixture of weariness and relief.

"How're you feeling?" Astrid asked, wrapping her arms round his shoulders and pulling him in towards her. There was no intimacy there – this was something often done in Berk to share body heat in winter, particularly with someone wounded like Hiccup – but Astrid felt her heart flutter ever so slightly, and idly wondered why.

"A little better…though the cold makes my leg hurt worse than in already does."

"It'll get better Hiccup, don't you worry. None of us are going to let you down this time."

"Astrid…"

Hiccup turned to look over his shoulder at her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." Astrid's reply was instant. "We did this to you and we know it, and we all know we owe you your happiness, at the very least." She paused, before quietly adding, "Most of all myself."

"I don't doubt you in the slightest, Astrid" Hiccup replied straight away, his eyes still locked with hers as she continued to embrace him. "You've been wonderful to me, and I can't tell you how grateful I am. It's… it's my dad…"

Hiccup's voice trailed off, and after a moment, Astrid replied, "It's his guilt, Hiccup. In the past he avoided you because he thought you were a failure."

Astrid felt Hiccup's shoulders tense under her forearms, and she quickly and forcefully added, "You _aren't, _Hiccup, and never, _ever_ tell yourself that you are, because _nothing_ could be further from the truth. Your father _thought _you were, but now he _knows_ he's wrong. But he's the chief, and…" Astrid sighed. "It's just going to be more difficult for him to apologize. He thinks he's lost you forever and he thinks it's his fault."

"He might be right" said Hiccup, with just the slightest edge of bitterness in his voice.

Astrid scooted round to sit in front of him and cupped his cheeks gently in her hands, staring straight into his eyes.

"Do you want him to be right?"

"No. Gods, no…"

"Then he _won't_ be. Don't worry Hiccup, he'll find his way back to you, it's just gonna take him a little longer than it did me, or Snotlout, or whoever else."

Hiccup looked down, and Astrid saw a single tear fall from his face into his lap. Almost instinctively, she wrapped her arms around him again and pulled him into another embrace, gently this time, softly, comfortingly.

"It's gonna be alright" she whispered, again and again, rocking him back and forth almost imperceptibly as silent sobs began to wrack his body.

* * *

In winters like those, it was hard to tell when day had arrived.

The only indication was the blackness of the sky being replaced with an almost imperceptibly lighter slate grey. There was no hope of a glimpse of the sun, and it was always a depressing time for the whole village. Of course, this particular winter it was at once much worse and a whole lot better, and Berk was left in the odd situation of, instead of having to worry about killing dragons, having to worry about keeping them alive and well.

Occasionally, stories and lore reached them from the lands further south of the domestication of horses and their usefulness. Very rarely, a trading party from Berk would venture that far, and would return speaking of much the same thing. There was not a hope of any equine animal surviving a year in Berk, but Astrid supposed that what was currently happening in the village would bear some resemblance to such tales.

Apart, obviously, from the fact that these were fire-breathing reptiles they were dealing with, rather than occasionally-grumpy but generally docile mammals about a fifth of the size.

Nonetheless, what was for Berk's standards a very big building was being constructed very close to the village square. This was to be the new dragon stables, and already, Spineless had made herself comfortable in there. Toothless would probably soon join her, as soon as the weather allowed, but he'd spent the last couple of days wandering about amicably in the Mead Hall – the only place big enough, it seemed, to contain the dragon's sudden boisterousness now that Hiccup had woken up. Astrid had walked in there briefly a couple of days prior to find the dragon swinging drunkenly from the high rafters by his tail. She wasn't the only one, either – her mother had told her of a memorable encounter later that same day in which Toothless had somehow got it into his head that he wanted to be underneath the main planning table. By the time the dragon had been calmed down, the table itself was upended, the wooden floor was broken in three places, and several of the heavy artefacts and ceremonial weapons that normally sat on the table were embedded in the far wall. Astrid had caught the amusement in her mother's voice when she told of how the dragon had simply lolled its tongue out at them and purred, and everybody in the room had suddenly found themselves incapable of remaining angry.

Gobber, meanwhile, had been trying for the life of him to work out how to salve and heal burns on dragon skin – these having been received aplenty by Toothless during the battle, and though they were much better than they had been, they still needed attention. It took some pretty severe temperatures to burn through dragon scales of any kind, and it seemed that correspondingly, those same scales took a long time to heal.

Warmth, it was known, was essential for any creature in winter, but particularly dragons, with their reptilian characteristics. They couldn't tolerate any extended exposure to the cold, and the weather was appalling anyway. Hiccup hadn't seen Toothless in a couple of days, but he was at the least convinced the dragon was welcome in the village, and was beginning to worm his infuriatingly adorable way into their hearts as he had Hiccup's. All the stories he heard seemed to point that way.

Astrid had taken one look outside her front door in the morning, once the skies had lightened about as much as they were ever going to, and decided immediately upon seeing for herself the sheer volume of snow on the ground and the rate at which it was still falling that there was not the slightest chance of Hiccup leaving the house today. She was quite content to wait – Hiccup needed her attention, and she got the feeling that he really didn't need to be anywhere that reminded him of his father, which ruled out his own house.

Hiccup had finally fallen asleep, exhausted, after perhaps an hour or two. Carefully, she'd rolled him onto his side and laid a thick fur blanket under him, and another on top, before stoking the hearth, swaddling Hiccup's stump carefully in bandages to ensure it stayed warm, and settling in for the night.

She'd doubted she'd be able herself to get any sleep, and sure enough, at no point had she felt even remotely tired. She was thinking too hard.

What was this she was feeling? It was easy to work out why she wanted to care for him – he deserved some looking after, given what he'd been through – but Astrid found she could no longer fool herself into thinking that it was nothing more than this. Caregivers, though they give over a lot of their time, do not spend every waking hour thinking of their patient as she had spent every waking and many sleeping hours thinking of Hiccup – no, it was something that ran far deeper.

Astrid as of yet had no word for it, but the tugging at her heartstrings was growing stronger with every passing day and every hour she spent with him.

Even when he snored. _Especially_ when he snored.

He was snoring now.

Astrid guessed it was about midday, and Hiccup had not yet woken up. He'd barely even moved throughout the night, his body clearly too exhausted even to adjust his position as he slept. The rise and fall of his chest was steady though, where only days before it had always been erratic. Physically at least, he was getting better.

The briefest blast of cold air into the room signalled the hasty arrival of her father, Ansgar, who slammed the door shut again quickly before the house froze. He walked over towards the hearth, before pausing in mid stride and shooting Astrid an almost comically confused glance as he spotted Hiccup lying in several layers of fur on the floor.

Wordlessly, Astrid pointed behind her father, got out of her chair and padded away from Hiccup, her father following quietly behind.

"He came over late last night" Astrid whispered, once they were a good distance away. She didn't want to disturb Hiccup if she could help it.

"Why?" her father responded, also whispering.

"I think he just wanted someone to talk to. He fell asleep after a while and there was no way I was getting him back to his house in that weather, so I wrapped him up where he was and let him sleep."

Her father paused a moment to glance back over his shoulder at Hiccup, before turning back to Astrid and whispering, "Was he, you know….alright?"

"No, he was upset… about his father, I think."

"We've all been worried about him…." Ansgar began

"I know, so imagine how it is for Hiccup."

The look of concern was plain to see on her father's face. He was himself very senior in the village, one of the chief's closest aides and the man responsible for much of the island's trade and monetary matters. Of course, this didn't stop him also being a frighteningly capable warrior, but it did mean his analytical side was more developed than most. Like Astrid, it seemed Ansgar could see the storm clouds brewing. Something was wrong with their chieftain.

Her father broke the silence. "I'll have to _try_ to get Stoick to see Hiccup as soon as he can. In the meantime…" Ansgar paused, and laid a reassuring hand on his daughter's shoulder, smiling slightly. "You're doing a very noble thing, Astrid, and I'm proud of you. That boy needed someone to look after him, and eventually I think the whole village will thank you for it – most of all him."

For the first time in a while, Astrid smiled. "Thanks, dad."

* * *

**Yeah yeah, it's a bit of a slowish chapter, but this is leading somewhere - think Stoick, basically, and that's all the hints you're gonna get! =P**

**Hopefully you all enjoyed it - please please PLEASE review and let me know!**


	14. By All the Gods, This Cannot Be

**Two chapters in a week! I'm on a (relative) roll!**

**This one's short but was very interesting to write. I won't say any more than that for now - you'll have to read the chapter! Isn't that a novel idea...XD**

**Meanwhile...18 reviews for the last chapter? Bloody hellfire, thank you all SO MUCH! For all the reviews I've had in fact, there's been so many useful, constructive comments in there!**

**Now, read on!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 14**

**By All the Gods, This Cannot Be...**

He stumbled blind through the deep and deepening snow, the wind howling around him and his face stung by a million tiny pinpricks as the snow and hail flung itself at him in almighty gusts. He screwed his eyes up at the maelstrom and hunched his shoulders instinctively forwards.

_I failed him._

He didn't know where he was going, only that he needed to go _somewhere._

_I failed him._

The visibility was atrocious - he knew he was somewhere deep in the forests of Berk, but he couldn't see a single tree or anything else that might have told him this, had he not already known. Past the end of his own nose, shapes blurred into one another, colours meshed into chaotic white, and eventually everything dissolved into an indistinct fog. He could barely see the snow he was stepping in.

This was what he needed - somewhere to forget and be forgotten.

_I failed him._

Falling to his knees with a sense of weary finality, his last waking thoughts were for his tribe, his village, and all that he'd held most dear in his life. He thought of the dragon raids and the camaraderie they'd brought with them. He remembered the final battle on the shingle beach just shy of three months ago, and how empty he'd felt since then.

Finally, as he fell once again, this time to lie on his back, he thought of his son, and his regret swelled to a mournful crescendo.

His son.

_I failed him. I failed all of them._

White became black, and Stoick the Vast remembered, and thought, no more.

* * *

The door crashed open, and winter swept unceremoniously into Astrid's house, snow beginning almost immediately to pile up inside.

Ansgar Hofferson hurried in, squeezing himself through the narrow doorframe. It was a sign of his urgency that the door itself was left hanging ajar, despite the storm.

Astrid's eyes snapped up from the dragon's harness she'd been mending, and as she registered the look of alarm her father was wearing, she stood up almost immediately herself, worry building in her all the time.

Her fears were confirmed moments later, with the first of the words her father spoke.

"The chief's missing." said Ansgar, his tone bordering on panic.

For a moment, Astrid felt as if she'd been stuck fast to the floorboards with the gravity of the news. It took her a moment to find her own voice.

"What?" she whispered incredulously, refusing to believe it.

If he was missing in this weather, he was in serious trouble.

"He isn't in any of the houses or the Mead Hall, or the Stables. and there's footprints in the snow going into the northern forests." Ansgar was speaking absurdly fast, the details seeming to tumble out of him as he made his shock and worry all too obvious.

Astrid's eyes widened still further. The northern forests were the most dense on the entire island, and were, _de facto_ at least, off limits in winter because of that. If you went in there in a storm, there was not a hope in Hel of you finding your way back out again by yourself, even if you were the most capable navigator, and no matter how well you knew the land.

"What are you going to do?"

Myself, Spitelout and several other men are going in there now to try and find him, but we'll have to make damned sure to mark our path well." The look on her father's face told Astrid they didn't hold out much hope of making any progress whilst the weather remained as it was.

"Why did you come to see me?"

"Because Hiccup doesn't know any of what I've just told you."

No further explanation was required. Astrid was the one who looked after Hiccup at the moment, and that was that. She didn't mind at all - in fact, as Hiccup had begun to find it easier to walk, and begun to come out of his shell ever so slightly, it had become more and more enjoyable just to spend time with him - but Astrid was most certainly not looking forward to this coming encounter.

_Duty first, but what an awful duty._

Reaching for her winter overcoat, Astrid asked, "Where is he?"

"Chief's house" her father replied quickly, himself hurrying to put on his own winter gear.

Without another word needing to be spoken, Astrid walked briskly out of the door and made haste straight for the hill in the middle of the village.

* * *

Toothless was being Toothless, and Hiccup's bed was on its side.

It was good having the dragon back, even if having him in the house was taking Hiccup some time to get used to.

During the briefest break in the weather, Toothless had taken it upon himself to bound eagerly across to the chief's house, almost break down the front door, and finally knock a very startled Hiccup flat on his back before hugging the boy so tightly with his forelegs that Hiccup had been gasping for air by the time Toothless had seen fit to let him go. He'd barely had time to draw breath before Toothless had started licking his face, refusing to stop despite all of Hiccup's protestations.

Though the weather was not even close to fit for flying in, Hiccup had chased Toothless around the house until he was so exhausted he'd collapsed on the bed, but he hadn't had much chance to even try to fall asleep before Hiccup had felt the bed wobbling under him, and moments later, he was flung out of it as the entire thing fell over.

Slightly dazed, Hiccup had looked up to see Toothless peering curiously over the top of the now-upended piece of furniture, whuffling confusedly, and that had been it. Hiccup had dissolved into fits of laughter.

He hadn't felt happier in all the days since he'd woken up, and it wasn't lost on him that it was the first time Toothless had been around during that time. Perhaps things were looking up.

It had, after all, taken him a long time to convince himself that the village genuinely wanted him now. The memory of the overheard conversation between his father, Astrid, Ansgar and others that had started it all was still fresh and certainly still stung to recall, and Hiccup was under no illusions that such sentiments had evaporated overnight - he'd convinced himself otherwise. In his darker moments, resent still coursed within him and threatened to pull him straight back under.

Oddly enough though, the only thing that had been keeping him from simply seeking out some way to quickly end it, had been Astrid. Hiccup had not forgotten her own role in his departure, and the stories he'd heard from her in guilt-laden and grief-stricken voices had left him in no doubt that the village had not missed him much in the time he'd been gone. Why was it, he wondered, that one of the main reasons that he'd left was now _the _main reason that he stayed? Hiccup knew full well that it made no sense, but somehow it seemed to work.

He yearned, though, for his father's acceptance. Despite Astrid's and Gobber's assurances that it was the chief's own remorse that held him back from speaking to his son, Hiccup felt he knew otherwise. It was too much to hope for that the chief would be accepting of the changes Hiccup had caused - to his father, Hiccup felt, he was now not just a failure, but a traitor, too.

It tended to darken his mood to think of such things, and every time it did, he found it was Astrid alone that could help him. When the anguish grew within him to such a frantic fever pitch that he wanted to scream and scream until his lungs gave out, Astrid had been the one to soothe him and talk him down from his anger.

Hiccup knew he could not have held any resentment for her if he'd tried. Despite all that she'd done before he'd left, what she had done after he'd come back was more than enough to make up for it. He owed his continued ability to function as a person to her, and he found it easy, in the final reckoning, to forgive her. He had.

A small smile played fleetingly across his lips as her voice, and her words from several nights ago, drifted back into his memory.

_You aren't a failure, Hiccup, and never, ever tell yourself that you are._

Thank the Gods for the smallest of mercies, went the old saying, but Hiccup knew the mercy somehow bestowed upon him was nothing short of miraculous. It had saved him and that was that - the strength she gave him when he had none of his own, strength given so selflessly. The cynical Hiccup who had left the village would never have believed Astrid Hofferson capable of such things - but he was a better person now than he had been back then, he felt sure of it.

He thought he was getting better. He thought he was almost there, that it would all work out in the fullness of time and that one day perhaps he could be happy, but as the door swung open and he caught sight of the expression on Astrid's face, the first murmurs began to build in his mind, murmurs that would eventually and inexorably grow to his entire world falling down around him for a second time.

* * *

Astrid walked straight in, steeling herself once again to give bad news. Awful news.

She didn't know if she'd be able to bear seeing the look of heartbreak, a look that she'd first seen upon Hiccup's realisation of the loss of his leg, for a second time. It had been soul-destroying to see someone so utterly wrecked, even if only for a moment, and she dreaded what was coming.

"Hi, Astrid" began Hiccup, the pleasant geniality in his voice failing to mask the slightest edge of worry that Astrid knew was soon to grow. "What brings you here?"

Astrid didn't say anything to begin with, instead crossing the room and sitting down on the floor with him, taking one of his hands in both of her own.

Only then did she feel like she could even get the words out.

"Hiccup...my father asked me to come and tell you -" she faltered momentarily, scared for Hiccup as to what the news might do to him - "tell you that...that your father's missing, Hiccup. He's somewhere in the northern forests. My father's organising a search party, but..."

She stopped there. The look on Hiccup's face was too much to bear continued talking.

The transformation was instantaneous - his eyes were at once vacant and all too horrifically full of awareness. His shoulders had slumped and his face was pallid and deathly white. His mouth hung slightly open, a wordless enunciation of sheer shock.

He was utterly, utterly still and limp. There was no tension in any of his muscles as Astrid drew him into a sympathetic embrace, somehow understanding that this was what was needed.

She was so very afraid for him, and afraid of what his father might have done. She couldn't know what he would do, or what it might do it him, if the chief was dead. She tried vehemently to force such thoughts from her mind, but they just wouldn't budge.

* * *

"CAN YOU STILL SEE THE TRACKS?" bellowed Spitelout to Ansgar over the noise of the storm. Despite the fact they were mere feet away from each other, it was getting increasingly hard to hear anything besides the incessant howling of the wind and everything that went with it.

"NO!" came the shout back. "I LOST THEM A MOMENT AGO! LAST I SAW THEY WERE HEADING THIS WAY!" Spitelout extended a fur-clad arm straight out in front of him by way of indication. Squinting through the murk, Ansgar could only just make it out.

He scanned the scene in front of him - there was not much to look at. One solitary tree trunk could just about be made out but aside from that there was almost no point in looking in the direction you were walking. It looked exactly the same whichever way you turned, and you certainly weren't going to learn anything by it.

"WE'LL KEEP GOING THIS WAY!" shouted Ansgar, gesturing in the same direction Spitelout had, after a moment's contemplation. They were already in danger of overstretching the line of markers they'd tied to tree stumps to guide them back out of the woods again, but this was the _chieftain _who was missing. They needed to know where he was, whether he was alive, and why all this had happened, above all else.

Stepping forwards into what looked like a slightly raised area of snow drift, Ansgar's foot caught on something unsighted beneath the thick blanket of white powder. Stepping back for a moment and probing the ground with his toe to test how level it was, his foot suddenly connected again with something solid, and a muffled metallic _clang_ reached his ears.

Ansgar's eyes widened. There was only one thing this could be.

"SPITELOUT! OVER HERE!" he bellowed, simultaneously dropping to his knees and beginning to dig frantically, huge swathes of the snow covereage being swept away by single swipes of the Viking's massive hand. Ansgar reckoned that it was Stoick's vast forged belt buckle that he'd accidentally kicked, and if that were the case and the chief was under here, he was going to be in a bad way.

Ansgar became aware of Spitelout joining him after a moment and immediately doing the same as he was, and agonizingly gradually, the depth of the snow lessened, and finally, Stoick's face came into view.

Even in the whited-out world they found themselves in, they could tell his face was blue and that he was certainly not conscious. Frantically, the two Vikings swept away the rest of the snow from Stoick's torso and legs, and with an almost unimaginable sense of dread, Ansgar lowered his ear to the chieftain's chest, checking for a pulse, and hoping against hope.

After only a moment, he straightened up, and looked Spitelout in the eye.

His face was grim, and the news horrific.

"He's gone."

* * *

**Right. When I said I had a big plot development in mind, I did mean it.**

**=P**

**I hope you'll all forgive me for the size of the bomb I've dropped here. Don't worry, this is NOT wanton character-death for the sake of it, nor is it somehow poetic revenge on the character for his evils (that isn't how I tried to write him anyway). There is a purpose in the wider context of the story, which should become clearer next chapter, when the consequences of all this start to unfold.**

**For now, though, please read and review! As always, I love to hear what you think!**


	15. This Is It, Then

**Deary me, I've subjected you to another rather long wait for an update, haven't I? SORREEEEEEEEeeeeeeee...**

**It took me a while to decide where I wanted to go with this - there are a couple of major watershed moments in this chapter, and I wanted to get them right, get the tone right, that sort of thing.**

**On another note... 24 FLIPPING REVIEWS FOR CHAPTER 14? Where on EARTH did I do anything deserving THAT level of wonderful feedback?**

**Thank you all SO MUCH for reviewing, and really I don't know what to say other than...Enjoy this next chapter!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 15**

**This Is It, Then...**

He clung to her like a drowning man would to a piece of driftwood, his one and only lifeline amongst the agony of simply not knowing.

Hiccup hadn't the first idea how long Astrid had been cradling him in her arms like this, and he didn't much care to wonder, letting the passage of time fall by the wayside and counting only the moments when he thought he might have heard the creak of the wooden porch outside that might signal the arrival of someone with news. Any news.

None had come yet.

One word whirled thorugh his head. One word and one alone.

_Why?_

Why had his father gone into the forests in this weather? Why was Astrid the only one capable of providing any solace from the nightmarish reality that threatened with every passing moment simply to overwhelm him?

Why, oh why, did it all have to happen to him?

_Why can't someone tell me where my father is?_

He could feel the tension in every muscle in his body, almost quivering from holding himself so taut.

He felt wrung out, utterly exhausted but at the same time absolutely incapable of letting go of his stress and his anxiety, and his anger and hurt and spite all broiled just below the surface. It was grinding him inexorably down. How evident it was to the village in general he didn't know, but there was only one person who had seemed at any point to recognise that Hiccup was in any sort of trouble at all, and even through his fog of anguished confusion Hiccup was so very glad that person was Astrid, and that it was her that he found himself with at that moment. Toothless lay curled protectively around the two of them as well, the dragon's winter lethargy having caught up on him during the night, despite his most valiant attempts to stay awake and comfort his rider and best friend. Even in sleep, though, Toothless seemed to be trying to reassure Hiccup, his powerful muscles contracting ever so slightly at regular intervals, giving Hiccup a slight squeeze every now and again to remind him that he was there. Hiccup was grateful for it.

All was absolute silence outside. The storm had died, eventually, and now a suffocating blanket of snow lay over Berk as testament to how quickly the wrath of nature could arise and then subside again to nothing. That was all there was.

In short, everything would have seemed peaceful to someone walking into the house not knowing the circumstances, but Hiccup knew all too well and all too bitterly that appearances were often not only deceptive, they were the absolute polar opposite of the truth. Dragons had _appeared_ dangerous, Astrid had _appeared _cruel, and, so he was told, upon emerging from the mists lying unconscious across Toothless' back in the battle's immediate aftermath, he had _appeared_ dead.

Of course, the opposite was true. He was far, far too alive for his own good, and though he couldn't quite bring himself to wish it were otherwise, in some small corner in the dark recesses of his mind sat the idea that death would have spared him some of the hurt. It was a thought he couldn't quite dislodge, as hard as he tried.

* * *

Morning came, and for the first time in weeks, you could tell.

Astrid had left Hiccup's side for a couple of seconds to peer out of the window, and was somewhat surprised to see a weak and lethargic sun peering blearily over the horizon back at her.

It had taken her a moment to remember that she actually knew what the sun _was_, so long had it been since any of them had actually caught sight of it.

The light should have been reassuring, should have felt safe and comforting, but given the events of the night, all Astrid could feel was a sickening weight of uncertainty settling deep in the pit of her stomach, and with every passing minute in which there was still no sign of the chief, it grew more acute. She could predict, with awful clarity, what would inevitably happen if the worst was true and Stoick was dead. The village would obviously require a new chief, and though the original decision for Snotlout to inherit that title - a decision made during the time in which Hiccup had, so very wrongly, been seen as not a true Viking and certainly no sort of leader - had never been officially revoked, privately Astrid knew from talking to him that Snotlout was not willing to be made chief when Hiccup had made plain he deserved it more than anyone - indeed, Snotlout had_ told _Astrid, in a moment of startling maturity when he'd been very sure that nobody else was listening, that he felt guilty over having originally felt like he deserved the title of chieftain more than Hiccup - that he looked back now on his own behaviour with revulsion, and regarded Hiccup now as highly as anyone, and much, much higher than himself.

Astrid supposed that the arrogance Snotlout had shown in his adolescence had been nothing more than a facade designed to fit in with the machismo of the Viking world, one that hid from view a far more decent person, and frankly she could identify with that. Her own carefully-cultivated image as a confident, brash, content-to-be-lonely shieldmaiden had shattered so easily, after all, and from behind that had emerged the caring, compassionate person she really _wanted_ to be.

Her amazement grew every day at the multitude of things that Hiccup had turned upside down and changed.

He didn't know it though, and Astrid's gut tightened in horror at the thought of what it might do to Hiccup to have the chieftainship thrust upon him. The village, she was sure, wouldn't have it any other way, and if he refused, that was it - the rules, ancient and immovable as they were, dictated exile, something she felt sure would lead to Hiccup just deciding there and then to end it, that fragile was his state of mind.

She certainly didn't envy him in the choice he'd have to make, but as it began to look more and more as if he would indeed have to make that choice, and very soon, she knew she _had _to be there for him.

Just as this thought entered her mind, however, her contemplation broke, as her wandering gaze suddenly caught Spitelout emerging from behind the elder's house at the northernmost point of the village. He walked briskly, his demeanour hard to tell from his gait, his head bowed as if facing a cold wind rather than as if delivering bad news. Nonetheless, he was very plainly headed for the chief's house, where the two of them were.

A sense of foreboding began to grow, slowly, imperceptibly, but steady and certainly there.

Astrid padded softly back over to Hiccup, who was sitting on the thick floor rugs, staring absently at the far wall and the hearth, and nudged him gently.

"Spitelout's on his way."

Hiccup's head shot round to face her, his eyes meeting hers, the sudden concern so very evident on his features.

"I'll go out and see what he wants" continued Astrid, "he probably just wants to check up on you."

Hiccup snorted by way of response, his opinion of that idea all too evident from the expression of derision on his face, and Astrid didn't blame him - whatever it was that Spitelout wanted, it was fairly unlikely to be _that_. She'd just made it up to try to reassure him - and herself, actually - but it hadn't worked.

She slowly cracked open the door and slipped outside, hurrying over towards Spitelout, who glanced up and nodded stiffly by way of acknowledgement.

"What's the news?" asked Astrid as she reached him, an edge of trepidation in her voice.

Spitelout merely looked at her, and the mournful line of his brow told Astrid everything she needed to, and didn't want to, know.

A long and silent moment passed between them, as Astrid's mind reeled.

The chief was dead.

It had always been a possibility - the Viking lifestyle was a dangerous one, and everyone had always known that death was an 'occupational hazard' of belonging to a clan that habitually fought fire-breathing dragons, but somehow that possibility had always seemed distant - surreal, as though despite being incredibly likely, it would never actually _happen_.

Now, though, it had, and reality was brought suddenly into focus, and Astrid knew difficult times lay ahead, both for the whole village, and for one young man, who had just been shouldered with an almost intolerable responsibility.

Finally, Spitelout broke the silence. "We found him in a snow drift, but by then it was far too late. Your father's gone to gather the village together in the Mead Hall so that he can announce the news to them. I came over here to tell Hiccup myself, separately, but if I'm honest... I was sort of hoping you'd be here."

"You want me to tell him?" asked Astrid, guessing immediately what was troubling the Viking in front of her. He didn't know - hadn't the first _clue -_ how to break the news gently, and that was what Hiccup was going to need.

"Astrid... I have no right to ask you to do this, but... yes" Spitelout finally sighed, his shoulders slumping.

"I'll do it, but... I'm not sure anyone in Midgard could find a way to break _this _to him in a way that doesn't hurt him... I'll try, but..." Astrid let her voice tail off, not wanting to voice the thought of what Hiccup might do.

He might do anything. He'd lost his leg, and now his father, when he and Stoick were not yet reconciled, and then he was being asked to take on the task of leading a clan that not all too long ago had hated him. He was still barely able to _walk_.

Nonetheless, Astrid turned and walked slowly back to the house, preparing herself for the inevitable.

* * *

Hiccup heard the creaking of the door as it swung slowly open. He heard the soft footsteps on the hard wooden floor making their way slowly towards him.

Somehow, in his gut, he knew, but his brain didn't want to believe it. His heart... his heart didn't know what to feel.

"Hiccup" Astrid's voice, gentle and sounding so laden down with sorrow already, caused him finally to raise his head to meet her gaze.

"He's gone, isn't he?" Hiccup heard his own voice respond, with an eerie calm, whilst the rest of him grappled desperately for hope, scrabbling for shards of light amongst the growing dark, and found none.

This was it, then - the moment he lost his sanity. He could feel himself fracturing, one half of him dispassionately observing the agony of the other half, and wondering idly what would happen next.

_Is this what it feels like to be driven mad by grief?_

He felt his hands begin to tremble, even despite Astrid's silence. Her lack of an answer was, in fact, all but a confirmation of what he now had to admit he'd known for some time and hadn't wanted to believe - his father was gone, and had left him with an awful choice by way of an inheritance - an awful, horrendous task.

Hiccup felt the tears begin to well up as he thought of what could have been. He'd craved his father's attention, yearned for his approval, and since the battle, all either of them had done was worry that the other would not wish to see them any more. It had occurred to neither of them to try to mend the wounds, that perhaps this was only a difficult phase on the path to a brighter future - everything else had seemed gradually to be falling into place for Hiccup, but he'd yet again refused to let himself be happy. Through his own stupidity, his father was gone.

_We each felt the same._

_We each longed for the other's forgiveness, but neither of us believed it possible and so, we never found the courage to speak to one another. And now, we never will._

Before the wounds had had a chance to heal themselves the pain had grown too much, and one of them was dead and the other distraught.

_I am not ready for this._

_I am not._

With those final thoughts, Hiccup felt the dam holding back the tide of hopelessness and all-consuming, agonising sorrow, that he'd been relentlessly stifling for far longer than in fact he'd ever known, finally crack, shatter and give way. A million and one chaotic emotions ran unimpeded through his head, not a single one of them happy, or healthy, or loving, caring or beautiful. A cacophany of ugly thoughts, an anarchic, seething turmoil that seemed to physically seize at his heart and clutch at his stomach. Sick was how he felt - sick, frightened, and very much alone.

He felt himself beginning to go under, and it mattered not one iota that his physical self was still sat in his house, kneeling on the floor, for he was dying inside and felt no great compulsion to try to stop it.

The agony reached a crescendo, snapshots of his father's voice reverberating in his head.

Then suddenly, it stopped. His mind, his emotions, quieted and calmed.

It took him a moment to work out why. But before long, he came fully back to himself and was able to register the tight embrace he was now held in, the enfolding arms of the one girl, the one and only person who could have saved him in that moment and, thank all the Gods, the one who just had.

* * *

Astrid held her arms tightly around Hiccup's torso and squeezed for all she was worth, willing him to come back to her, and trying not to show him just how terrified she was.

Hiccup's reaction had been frightening, there was no other word for it. Seeing the chaos build behind his eyes, seeing his hands and then his arms and then his whole body begin to tremble and shudder violently, had awakened some deep-seated instinct that told her simply to hold him closer than she'd ever held anything before. It had not taken her long to respond.

She felt Hiccup begin to return her embrace, tentatively at first, and then vice-like as his entire body convulsed with heart-wrenching sobs.

_All I can do is be here for him._

Hiccup was more sorrowful than words could describe, but he was holding up - just. For a moment, it had looked as if he would be lost to them forever, and it would have been enough to drive anybody over the edge of rationality to lose their father in this way, but somehow, Hiccup had dug his fingernails in and held on.

_Was that me?_

Astrid could only wonder.

* * *

It seemed that hours passed in silence as the two of them held one another and tried to come to terms with what had happened. Hiccup's sobs had quieted to silent weeping and then to nothing but contemplative silence, and still Astrid knew, felt, that she could not let go, that she would not let go.

In some ways, it frightened her how much she cared, but it frightened her more how much she had failed to care in the past.

Finally, in the silence of the room, Astrid heard Hiccup whisper her name, sounding exhausted - wrung out.

"Astrid"

"Yes?" she responded, her voice soft.

"Thankyou"

It was such a simple word, and spoken so simply, but it nearly took her breath away with its sincerity.

"What for?"

"Everything." The response was immediate. "You've been the person I could come to for help these past few weeks. I can't...I will _never..._ be able to express my thanks properly for that. You saved me from myself, when I... when I needed it."

Astrid was stunned, there was no other way of describing it. Hiccup's words had gone straight to her heart and there seated themselves.

She found herself finally able to see the truth. Hiccup was the person now that she cared for more than anyone else.

She had never cared for _anyone_ more - her family, her friends - nobody.

Her breath caught in her throat as it hit her all at once what the weeks and months prior to that moment had _really_ meant - had _really _signified. A growing attachment, a concern for his wellbeing. She'd stayed with him for the whole of his time spent unconscious.

Surely there was only one thing that could have changed her so much, so quickly.

In that very moment, Astrid realised what the rest of the village had secretly come to know simply by watching her, thought they had never let on.

She'd fallen in love.

Hiccup must have felt her tremble slightly at these thoughts, for his embrace around her suddenly tightened, and she heard him ask, "What is it?", but her mind was still trying to adjust. It was as if someone else had planted the thought in her head - almost as if the Gods had finally become exasperated with her procrastination.

Hiccup needed someone to care for him and keep him close to their own heart, and he needed that there and then and with no preconditions, and Astrid found herself wanting, yearning, to be that source of comfort.

_I love him_.

It sounded strange, unusual - un-Viking - but still so very wonderful, and she knew it was true.

Now she had only to tell him.

Easy, right?

* * *

Hiccup's question hung unanswered for a moment in the air, before he heard her speak, hesitantly at first.

"Hiccup, I... I don't have the words to describe what the last few months have been like. So many times... so many times it looked one way or another like we were going to lose you, like _I _was going to lose you... and every time it happened, I've found myself worrying more and more. I..." Astrid sighed, and seemed then and there to make up her mind. Her voice grew firmer. "I care about you Hiccup, and you know that from the way I've spent time with you and tried to help you through this, but... it's more than that. I was not ready for this, I was not expecting it, and that's why it's taken so damned _long _for me to work out my own feelings, but I know now what I feel. I...Hiccup, I love you. I just...I do. I love you."

It was typical Astrid, forcing herself to stop beating around the bush, looking away afterwards as if surprised at herself, and it was as if Hiccup's heart had been struck by a bolt of lightning. It was almost a physical shock to the system to hear it.

But then, in the few seconds afterwards, one more emotion found its way into Hiccup's mind. It forced all the others out, but he didn't much care, for this emotion _was _happy, and beautiful, and caring and...loving.

That's what it was. He felt the very same back, and before he could stop himself, he'd blurted it out, and changed everything.

"I love you too, Astrid."

Astrid's head snapped back towards him, his eyes met hers, and slowly she began to smile, and Hiccup felt himself responding in kind, and then they were laughing with joy, and it felt so very _right, _all of a sudden.

"Took us long enough to work it out, didn't it?" chortled Astrid, redoubling their laughter, and gradually, they found themselves moving closer to one another, holding one another just that little bit tighter, until finally, their faces were mere inches one another, and all of a sudden, and for the first time in a very, very long time, it was blissfully plain and obvious what came next.

The two of them leaned in simultaneously, each closing their eyes as their lips met ever so softly in the middle, and as they sat there on the floor of the chief's house and slowly found each other's hearts, Hiccup was, for the first time - _ever _- happy.

He might have lost his father, he might have been shouldered with the responsibility of leading an entire clan, but now he had someone he could rely on, someone to love and who would love him back, and the future didn't seem quite so dark, forbidding and frightening any more.

Hope, then. This was what it felt like.

* * *

**Well, it's been looking like going that way for a while, in fairness. XD**

**I felt the time was right for Astrid to finally realize why she's so hell-bent (or Hel-bent =P) on making sure Hiccup's alright and cared for. For someone like Astrid, it felt like it needed a suitably dramatic moment to spur that to happen, and there was one conveniently there.**

**This marks a bit of a turning point in the story, I feel, although I haven't got anything planned out in detail, we're gonna see Hiccup becoming chief, and then all sorts can and will happen.**

**Hope you guys enjoyed, and more than anything I hope I haven't overdone it!**

**Please Read and Review - in other words, keep doing what you're doing, you AMAZING PEOPLE! =D**


	16. Soar

**WELL HELLO THAR!**

**Took me long enough didn't it? You may have noticed a couple of oneshots of mine have gone up in the last six months, but that's a poor showing and I'm well aware of that. What can I say? A crazy period of my life combined with an absolute dearth of inspiration CONSPIRED against me, I tell ye!**

**Anywayyy... I conceived of writing this chapter after I listened to a particular part of the HTTYD soundtrack on youtube and realised I hadn't ever written anything like the scene that accompanied it in the movie into this story. It needed to happen, and this seemed like a good moment to slot it in, and it got me writing again.**

**I shall say no more except ENJOY! Oh yeah, and REVIEW!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 16**

**Soar**

It was going to be a beautiful day. Hiccup knew this, even before the sun came up, from the moment he opened his eyes and looked over to see Astrid lying beside him on the floor, one of her arms resting lazily across his chest. His back ached to high Asgard from lying on the rough-milled floorboards and his clothing and hair was unkempt and unruly, but he didn't much care.

The silence was complete, save for the occasional creaking of the roof rafters, a noise with which he'd long been familiar, and which he'd associated with waking up since before he could remember. Never quite like this, though.

He shifted slightly, drawing closer to the wonderful, wonderful girl beside him, and she mumbled slightly by way of response, raising her head fractionally to meet his gaze with half-lidded, sleep-filled eyes, and smiling a smile of such radiant warmth that the fact that it was still deepest winter all of a sudden seemed utterly inconsequential.

"Mornin'" he murmured softly into the half-light.

"Morning." Astrid ached her back and rose to a sitting position, stretching her arms above her head and feeling the joints click as she did, before looking back down at Hiccup and running her hand softly along one of his forearms, concern clear in her expression. "How are you feeling?"

It took him a moment to answer. "I don't really know. Sort of… well, calm, really. It's weird. I don't… I don't really know what I _should_ be feeling…"

"Well, you've been through a lot, I don't blame you…" replied Astrid, running her hands through her hair to try to at least partly disentangle it. The previous evening, as she'd held Hiccup in her arms, she'd seen him grow more and more exhausted by the minute, and eventually he'd fallen asleep right where they were, there on the floor. Not wanting to leave him on his own or try to move him, and certainly not wanting to venture outside in the middle of the night, when there was still a gale blowing and snow falling so thickly that visibility was basically nought, she'd instead tiptoed upstairs, grabbed the thick fur blanket from Hiccup's bed, lain down next to him, draping the fur over the two of them as she did, and had gone to sleep there. It had seemed a good idea at the time.

"Your floor has splinters" she added abruptly, picking a couple of tiny wood fragments from her fingertips, which were practically the only parts of her left uncovered in the heavy winter clothing she still wore.

"Always has, always will" Hiccup retorted in jest, a slight smile playing across his lips as he too hauled himself up off the floor, stretching his back out as he did so. He glanced over to where Toothless was lying curled around one of the house's supporting pillars, rumbling softly with every outward breath and his tail flicking slightly every now and then. He could see the dragon's new harness, with its stunning vivid red tailfin, lying in a pile by the door.

It gave him an idea.

"Astrid…" he began, his voice deliberately nonchalant, "how long has it been since Toothless was flown?"

"Not since the battle. None of us would have had the faintest idea how to work his tailfin… and I don't think many of us would have wanted to try. After all, you designed it." replied Astrid, who was still concentrating on her wayward hair. "Why?"

"Well, there's absolutely no wind out there" he mused, half to himself, gazing out of the window, "and it's almost dawn."

She stopped immediately, her fingers stalled halfway through unpicking a particularly large tangle, and she slowly turned to meet Hiccup's eyes.

"You want to go flying with him?"

"And with you."

Astrid could have sworn that the only thing stopping her jaw from hitting the floor was the fact that, kneeling down as she was, her thighs were still in the way. Stunned did not quite cover it. His first flight with Toothless in three months, his first with the new harness and the first with his new leg – and Hiccup wanted to share that with her?

She'd always assumed that flying together would be a strictly private thing between Hiccup and Toothless, something nobody else would ever, could ever intrude on or be invited into – something special to the two of them and the two of them alone. After all, from the stories she'd heard from Hiccup, flying was what had brought the two of them together and bound them so close together in friendship – and above all, _absolute _trust – back when this friendship was, out of necessity, the most precious and guarded of secrets – back when dragons were still _supposed_ to be the enemy.

She'd never even imagined she might ever be asked to be even a small part of that. The thought just hadn't occurred to her. Her astonished silence must have struck a chord, because the grin that lit up Hiccup's face was the broadest she could ever remember seeing on him.

"I think you'd like it. It's pretty amazing... Particularly at daybreak" Hiccup continued, as he peered once again out of the window, before pacing quietly over to the door and scooping up the tailfin, harness and assorted other paraphernalia. After a moment spent untangling the cables, he walked over to where Toothless was still slumbering away contentedly.

"Hey bud" he whispered, scratching Toothless behind one ear, "I've got something I think you're gonna love…"

Astrid saw the dragon crack one lazy, lethargic eye open a fraction, peering momentarily at Hiccup before his gaze meandered downward.

The moment Toothless caught sight of the harness that Hiccup held in his other hand, though, both of his eyes snapped wide open and he jumped immediately to his feet, quivering with excitement and madly wagging his rear end , before abruptly jumping up into, and then all over, the roof rafters, roaring enthusiastically and his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Astrid could only watch in bemusement, as Hiccup roared with laughter.

With an almighty thump, Toothless finally landed back on the floor, a small cloud of dust erupting in protest from the age-old floorboards, and he began insistently nudging his head against the harness, obviously eager to be fitted with it as soon as he possibly could be. Hiccup kept laughing even as he fastened the straps of the new tailfin and threaded the cables through to the stirrup, every so often using a free hand to idly scratch away at Toothless' scales.

"Buddy, you're gonna have to calm down a bit, Astrid's coming as well" said Hiccup, just as he was fitting the last of the saddle-straps. Toothless' eyes instantly fixed on Astrid, and he let out a long, low, acquiescent rumble before padding over to where she stood and strode around her, nuzzling her with his head in the manner of a cat around its owner's leg.

She couldn't help but laugh herself, although her stomach was, perhaps inevitably, doing somersaults.

* * *

The first hues of purple-red early dawn were beginning to saturate the wood of the windowsill and bathe the room in a soft kind of half-light, and as Hiccup opened the front door and stepped outside, his footsteps falling softly in the snow, he was met with the sight of the ocean, gleaming like an immaculately polished sapphire, utterly becalmed and still, much as was the air.

That was, really, what _he_ felt like. Becalmed. At ease.

At peace.

It had been a long, long time since he'd last felt like that.

_Too long._

The sky above was cloudless save for a few wisps of cirrus, glowing orange from their lofty vantage point, running ahead of the hue of the sky, brightening constantly as the crescendo of daybreak drew closer.

How he longed to reach those clouds as he had before, to be able once again merely to lift his arm and trail his fingers through them. It had been so long.

He felt a slight nudge in the back, and stepped aside to let Toothless and Astrid join him. The dragon wasted no time, stepping ahead a couple of paces to be clear of the house before lowering his torso to the ground and staring eagerly at them both. Chuckling slightly to himself, Hiccup swung his good leg over and reached down to fasten his foot into the stirrup, before lifting his other leg and taking a moment to line it up properly, before sliding home the new latching mechanism that held his prosthetic in place.

He had Gobber to thank for that.

Behind him, Astrid had merely perched on the rear of the saddle, her feet at that point still reaching the ground thanks to Toothless' posture, but Hiccup knew once the dragon stood up she'd feel quite precarious where she was - let alone when they took off.

He turned and looked over his shoulder at her. "You're probably going to want to hold on to something… the edge of the saddle should be okay, but if –" he started, before being cut off as Astrid merely smiled at him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling herself forward so that she was pressed into his back.

He couldn't help but notice just how perfectly the two of them seemed to fit together, sat like that.

"I… I guess that'd work as well" he finished, a slight blush playing across his cheeks. Astrid's smile broadened, and she leaned in to peck him softly on the lips.

It took Hiccup a moment to regain his thoughts after that, but at length he turned to face forwards again, with a smile to match Astrid's now plastered on his face as she settled her chin into the crease of his shoulder. Toothless snorted in good-natured impatience, before standing up and padding in a small circle, his tail trailing behind him within his line of sight, as if he were checking the mechanism himself before committing to the air. It was a habit Toothless had gotten into, and he did it every time they flew.

But this felt like the first time all over again.

Gods, it had been _so long_.

"Okay Toothless, we're both a bit rusty and we've got a passenger, so let's just take it easy to start with, okay?"

Toothless gave a slight flick of one of his ears and snorted softly by way of acknowledgement, and then slowly, two great black shapes grew in either side of Hiccup's peripheral vision as the dragon brought his wings to their fullest extension, stretching them out and purring in delight after so long spent grounded. He gave them a slight flutter, as if clearing cobwebs off them, and Hiccup felt the tell-tale subtle crouch in Toothless' forelegs and accompanying slight wriggle of the tail that meant – had always meant – they were about to be on their way.

Astrid's grip around his waist tightened. She'd noticed as well.

Then, finally, with a gentle _whooshing_ noise, a flurry of snowflakes and one powerful, surging, but totally silent wingbeat, Hiccup felt and saw the ground fall away from the three of them, all the houses shrinking to a miniscule size within seconds, and it all felt so familiar, but still so gloriously _new_, that he couldn't help but cry out in simple, sheer joy, a cry that reverberated throughout the village – _his_ village – in the calm dawn air as they climbed away.

* * *

It was amazing. Amazing.

It was also pretty frightening, to begin with at least.

Astrid's grip on Hiccup's waist, which had already been pretty tight, suddenly clamped like a vice as she felt a sudden, unfamiliar upward lurch that she nonetheless knew could only mean one thing. She shut her eyes tight, for some reason feeling as if being unable to see the receding ground might somehow reduce the enormous danger she felt herself to be in. The only thing she had to compare such motion with was the deck of a ship pitching on a rough swell, but whereas a ship rose on one limb of a wave and fell predictably again on the other, they just kept on inexorably barrelling upwards.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, it settled. The movement stilled and the acceleration gradually tailed off, and she relaxed her arms slightly, but still she didn't want to open her eyes. She could feel the cold wind whipping past her skin at a speed greater than anything she'd ever felt before, and her hair was fluttering like crazy.

Her first emotions on the whole flying experience, in all honesty, were simple confusion. She had absolutely no idea what to make of it.

"Astrid, I promise you, it's fine. Come on, open your eyes. This… is about the best I've ever seen it look up here."

The sound of Hiccup's voice jolted her slightly, a testament to her jangled nerves, but she felt her brow relax slightly nonetheless, so that her eyes were not screwed tightly shut, but merely resting closed.

_Ah well_, she thought, trying to inject some rationality into her behaviour, _I'm up here now, I might as well take a look._

With that thought – as absurdly mundane as it was, given the circumstances – still fresh in her mind, she opened her eyes, cautiously at first, and the sight she was met with, she knew right then, would stay with her for the rest of her days.

"Great_ Odin" _she breathed, in hushed, astounded awe.

The horizon was _burning_, the dawning sun firing the sky with brilliant, searing oranges and yellows and reds and purples, hazing and blurring the line between sky and ocean and scattering shimmering reflections in the mirror-glass water far, far below. The sense of space was phenomenal, distant islands that she knew to be hundreds of miles across appearing no larger than the span of her hand, seabirds that were no more than pinpricks of white whirling and wheeling in vast flocks miles beneath them, so it seemed, and all of a sudden, she felt very tiny indeed.

She looked above her. There, still, were those beautiful, lacelike clouds, and behind those the points of light of hundreds of thousands of stars. The air was clear up here, clearer than she could ever remember it. She breathed in deeply even as her eyes still roamed, and she felt the piercing, sharp coolness of the air bite in her throat and lungs.

It felt cathartic.

Toothless banked slowly away to the left, describing a wide arc that turned them a complete half circle, to face the way they had been coming. As they did so, Astrid caught sight of Berk, framed above the curvature of the upper surface of the dragon's wing, and she gasped anew at the miniscule detail and beauty of the island, her _home_ island, laid out below her as if on a map but exquisite in every tiny detail. Here, she could see the trees lining the clearing of the cove where Hiccup and Toothless had met, and there was the oversized chimneystack of the blacksmith's forge. And _there_, silhouetted against the ocean, to the north of the island, were the great needles, pillars of rock seeming to pierce the skin of the water and rise hundreds of feet sheer into the air, their stone faces weather-beaten and rugged. A jolt of amazement ran through her as she realised that she was only the second person, _ever_, to look _down_ upon them.

The first, of course, was sat right in front of her.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Hiccup's voice broke through the fog of her astonishment, and with a start she again tightened her grip on him, still very conscious of just how high up they were.

"It's... it's amazing, Hiccup." Her voice was soft, barely rising over the noise of the air rushing past them. Her eyes fell on the broad, black-scaled shoulders of the dragon who'd taken them there, and she leant down slightly, taking one of her hands from around Hiccup's waist and reaching down to place it gently on Toothless' flank, feeling the ripple of the muscles below the surface as she did so.

"He's amazing." she added, and she felt the whole of his body rumble as he purred by way of an answer.

Hiccup smiled that beautiful smile of his, and after a moment, replied;

"I know."

* * *

**I LOVE the romantic flight scene in the movie. Who doesn't?**

**What that meant here specifically was that this was an absolute pleasure to write.**

**If there's anybody still out there... I'd love to hear if it was a pleasure to read! Please, PLEASE review!**


	17. Succession and Ascension

**Hi there everyone. This is the third time in a row I've left you all hanging for ridiculous lengths of time and if there's anyone out there still reading this thing, that would amaze me. I'll add a fuller explanation at the end, but for now I hope this chapter is not totally awful and I hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

**Hero of the Day**

**Chapter 17**

**Succession and Ascension**

Of course, it had to end, and reality had to worm its way back in. The sun was clambering its way up into the sky, laboriously it seemed, and the weight on Hiccup's shoulders, lifted though it had been for few glorious hours, settled again, leaden and burdensome. There was to be a meeting - that was all he had been told upon landing, when he'd been accosted by Ansgar, who had only taken a moment to look surprised that his daughter had been on the back of a dragon before he'd launched into the briefest and most frantic of explanations and disappeared before Hiccup had even had time to open his mouth in reply. A public meeting in the Great Hall, that evening, and Hiccup knew that it could only mean one thing.

Astrid had stayed with him for the moment, and the two of them had decamped to the forge with Toothless whilst her father and Spitelout held what could only have been a crisis meeting, locked inside Astrid's house on the other side of the village with strict instructions that they were not to be interrupted. No amount of deep breathing exercises or restless pacing could quash the rising tide of profound uneasiness welling in Hiccup's chest, and it must have showed because it was not long before Astrid grabbed him by the arm and marched him across to a chair, plonked him unceremoniously down and handed him her axe and a grindstone that she'd grabbed from an adjacent tabletop.

"I've been meaning to get it sharpened, Hiccup, and now seems as good a time as any. Would you mind?"

A moment of confusion - the axe was self-evidently as sharp as the day it was made - as the day he'd made it, in fact - before her reasoning clicked. Of course he needed to blow off some tension - it was just that it had taken her a lot less time to notice that fact that it had for him to become aware of the same thing. Smiling momentarily to himself, he spun the grindstone once in his hand, something he'd grown used to doing countless times over the years, before sweeping it once over the edge of the blade, and again, and repeatedly, turning the axe frequently and getting lost in the familiarity of the act.

She could see that his breathing had slowed and his shoulders had relaxed, the quivering bowstring-like tautness that had built up in them washing away as Hiccup took solace in the art of a profession he knew well, a profession that was, later that afternoon, going to be so rudely supplanted by one he knew not a thing about.

The chieftainship.

* * *

The Mead Hall was bustling, full all the way from the wall of the cliff that the chamber was hewn out of, to the great doors at the far end. Dragons of spectacular multitudes and all of different sizes and varieties hung precariously from the rafters by their tails and legs and in some cases, notably the Gronckles, their mouths. A sea of protruding horns adorning floating metal domes, so it seemed, sat below that, about six feet above where the floor of the hall would have been if he could have seen it. Vikings were averse to taking their helmets off at the best of times, and it was to Hiccup's mind a small miracle that nobody had yet suffered an injury of some sort from being packed in so tightly. The raised dais on which Hiccup stood, leaning subtly on Toothless to support his weight, seemed at least by comparison an oasis of calm and silence and a notable lack of cacophony. Even so, as he stood there along with the assembled senior villagers as well as Astrid, Snotlout, Ansgar and Spitelout, he felt distinctly like he would rather have been down there amongst the crowd, and have had a few more minutes of blissful ignorance, than be where he was, knowing full well what was about to happen.

What was in fact about to happen was that the village was to learn of the death of one of their longest-serving and greatest chieftains, and Hiccup had a sneaking suspicion that upon hearing the news, the assembled tribe would show a propensity to suddenly decide that pure undiluted anarchy suited them down to the ground, and Hiccup knew from experience that a horde of panicking Vikings was a sight one was best advised to view from some distance away.

"Hiccup." a voice spoke up from next to him. He turned towards Snotlout, the one who had spoken.

"You're going to need to bring me up to speed on this" his cousin went on, his voice low and even. "I missed some of the detail when I spoke to my father earlier... he was speaking as if his ticket to Valhalla depended on the number of words he could get past his lips before the sun went down. What's happening in what order?"

Hiccup leant in slightly, mumbling with minimal lip movement so that none of the eagle-eyed, bat-eared wives and mothers in the crowd could guess at what he was saying. He'd been given a crash course in the procedure of the event a couple of hours earlier, and suffice to say he himself felt a little short of prepared, but thankfully this meeting was only to announce events, not to actually set them in motion as of yet.

"Your father is going to be the one to actually announce it, and that's obviously first. Then, assuming we've not all been stampeded to death -" Hiccup saw Snotlout smile wryly to himself for a moment - "he'll go on to proclaim me the new chief and you as High Advisor. Next, I fail miserably at finding something inspirational and profound to say -" Snotlout snorted in barely-suppressed laughter this time, and despite himself, Hiccup even managed to grin slightly - "and then the date of my investiture will be announced."

"What is the date?"

"The first day there isn't snow on the ground." At Snotlout's quizzical look, Hiccup continued, "What? It's not as if anyone could fail to notice it."

"Fair point. What then?"

"Then, Ansgar will talk at length about the funeral. I don't really know what the plans are, so I'll have to pay attention... I've been too busy these past hours running over what I have to do in this particular meeting to worry too much about that yet."

"How are you holding up, anyway? It can't have been easy..."

"I'm doing alright, Snotlout. It hasn't... it hasn't really hit me yet, though I know it's going to soon."

Snotlout patted Hiccup on the shoulder. "You'll be alright." He paused, before adding, "We're going to be some of the busiest people on Berk in the next few months, aren't we? How did I get from being so juvenile in dragon training just a few months ago to this?"

"I guess I changed more about this village than I reckoned on" Hiccup answered drily, smiling again to himself in spite of the circumstances, and recieved a genial thwack on the arm from his cousin for his troubles.

The time was approaching for the meeting to get underway, and the guards at the doors heaved the great slabs of oak shut against the still-bitterly-cold elements, before themselves turning towards the platform to watch and listen. Gradually, the cavernous room began to quieten and the echoes subsided as one by one, the men and women and children present began to notice the elder staring out at them, waiting for silence, where moments before she had been absorbed in urgent conversation with Spitelout. Even the Terrible Terrors had stopped their mindless chittering. That had _never_ happened before.

Hiccup had begun to note the first stirrings of unease rumbling through the crowd, as they realized that, at the start of the meeting proper, Stoick was still absent. Evidently, the villagers had up until that point assumed that the chief had been somehow delayed and that the meeting would begin once he arrived. Hiccup grimaced slightly at the thought that so many people were about to have their illusions so violently shattered, and Astrid must have noticed, for he felt his arm being squeezed ever so slightly, and he looked up to see her smiling reassuringly at him. He smiled back wearily, grateful indeed for her presence and her actions, but already feeling somewhat wrung out, and Astrid just squeezed his arm again, her eyes full of understanding.

_Gods, what would I do without her?_

It was all so subtle, so that a casual observer would have had no inkling of the true nature of circumstances. None of the Vikings besides Ansgar and Snotlout knew yet what had transpired between the two of them, and only then because as Astrid's father and Hiccup's soon-to-be right-hand-man respectively, they _needed_ to know - he and Astrid had told them little more than an hour previously, and the two of them had barely lifted one eyebrow between them. The sense that the whole village had been waiting for them to realize what everyone else already knew had only grown at that point, but it did him the world of good for her to be there and, given what was about to happen, he felt he might need it.

He would have his time to grieve later of course, but right now there was a mountain of technicalities and due process to get through, which tended to block out everything else. _Never let it be said that Viking politics is simplistic, nor that we only debate with axes, _thought Hiccup as he waited for Spitelout to step forward to the front of the dais. His head was still aching a bit from his attempts a couple of hours ago to decipher the myriad laws of succession that applied to a sudden requirement for a new chief – even despite the fact that he'd had help from Spitelout, a man who'd been dealing with these very laws, in all their infuriating detail, for more than half his adult life.

It had all moved quickly, though. It was pretty brutal stuff in its own way, and for the moment it seemed to Hiccup almost as if his father had been forgotten, such was the obsessive focus on ensuring the succession.

He wasn't honestly sure whether he was glad of this - whether he was ready to forget so early. But he didn't really have much choice.

"Order! The meeting will come to order!" Spitelout's voice rang out over the heads of the villagers, and under those of the dragons, and instantly the volume in the room fell from low to nothing. All eyes were now on the platform.

"I have a... a very solemn duty to fulfill today." Spitelout went on, his voice somber and monotonic.

Stoick had been one of his closest friends.

Hiccup saw Spitelout square his shoulders and suck in breath, and it was then that the real magnitude of the situation punched him in the gut with something approaching physical revulsion.

_Gods, I am not ready for this._

"It is my duty to announce today, that..." Hiccup saw Spitelout clench his jaw tightly and close his eyes, before the hulking great man, one of the patriarchs of the village, forced the last of the words out.

"It is my duty to announce that yesterday night, at or around midnight, Stoick the Vast, mighty chieftain of the most high and great tribe of warriors of the island of Berk, passed from the world of Midgard into the afterlife, at the age of forty-seven"

As he spoke, and for the first few seconds afterwards, his words hung in the air like some delicate vase suspended high above the flagstone floor, held only from falling and shattering into oblivion by the momentary disbelief of the assembled masses.

It was almost as if Hiccup could see it in front of him, in his mind's eye.

_The vase began to fall, slowly at first._

The first growing looks of horror began to appear on a few of the faces in the crowd.

_Faster now, plummeting, he could see it._

A couple of gasps and cries echoed sharply around the hall. The unease grew with every second for those who did not already comprehend what was happening, what they had been told.

_Faster and faster, tumbling end over end, the vase that he swore he could see fell and fell until finally it hit the ground, shattering into millions upon millions of minute pieces._

A wall of sound, an indescribable cacophony, rose in the Mead Hall. Wails of hysterical grief rose above the noise and seemed to rend the air asunder; shouts and screams echoed and bounced off the walls, only adding to the volume and the chaos. Every single one of the dragons in the rafters was running amok above, empathising with the mood, hurtling frantically around the roof beams in a kind of panic all their own. It was all too easy to see they could tell _something_ was dreadfully wrong.

In the middle of it all, once again, the platform became the island of calm at the centre of the storm, and Hiccup stood at the centre of that island as the chaos washed over him in wave after wave, his eyes shut as he absorbed it, reflecting on how, as the starts of chieftainships go, this was one of the less auspicious ones imaginable.

* * *

Things had eventually calmed down in the Mead Hall, but it had taken a while, and the great central planning table had a few new dents in it courtesy of a couple of ill-judged axe swings. Vikings were prone to react to any bad news with violence, after all.

Spitelout had managed somehow to drag the meeting, kicking and screaming, back to some semblance of order, and had gone through the necessary technicalities, and they'd all gone through the motions, but it had never quite felt _real_. It had felt like they'd been play-acting some bizarre, macabre scenario, rather than dealing with reality.

Hiccup's speech hadn't gone badly, considering the circumstances, but he'd got the distinct feeling nobody had quite been listening.

_Standing fore-square in the shadow of my father, even in death._

Finally, the whole wretched thing had reached its end and the villagers and assorted dragons had left the Hall, collectively dazed and stunned, leaving only the few of them standing there, some in deep conversation spoken in low tones, others doing nothing but staring at the floor.

It did not bode well for events to come.


End file.
